'Umbrella' Part 3 - Building on Characters

After I knew what characters I wanted to be in my project it was time to develop them further and experiment with their designs.

Before I started illustrating the characters I need to know what the construction is behind them: what shapes would I be using and how tall would they be in comparison to their head size? I began roughly sketching the characters outline and mark the shapes in different colours so I could tell what the main shapes were and what were the shapes that stick out from the character. I think doing this helped me get a good grasp on what I wanted the characters to truly look like:

Next I focused on doing colour ways of the characters as although I really enjoyed the colours I originally came up with I wanted to experiment just to see if there was a new design I really liked. In the future I would definitely do this before colouring my characters just so I don't favourite the first design I create immediately which was what I done here still:

After I finished my colour ways I moved on to create the turnarounds for each character. I used the construction sheet as a reference and drew over it to make sure that the shape of the character was consistent throughout. I wanted to stick with a simple design showing the palette and the lines just to make it simple for someone who wanted to look at this character and draw it themselves.

I also did the comparative sizes using these gridlines too as it gives a clear indication to how big each character is compared to pone another. It's useful for when both these characters will be in shot. As you can see, Ghost is the height of Bee's body and legs:

I also did pose and expression sheets just to showcase what type of actions and emotions each character would display during the animation. Personally I found this to be a lot of fun as it made me be quite playful with my characters and to give them a bit of personality:

I think doing these sheets are very useful to help develop your characters from a small doodle on a sheet of paper into its own being with personalities and emotions.