A collection of my Character Designs
- final form
I’m not participating in National Novel Writing Month this year, but I am going to try to use November to make some progress on my current most promising original project–whether through art or through writing. I’ve been posting character designs from it infrequently, and now it has a title: The Djinni. I hope to post this story on the internet someday, but it’s still in its infancy right now.
This design won’t become relevant until a wayse into the story, but it never hurts to have a design handy for when I get there.
Completed 11.10.15
- November 13th, 2015 - King Solomon
Finally got around to drawing King Solomon for that story I’m working on. I’ve gone through a couple of iterations on Solomon’s design. I wanted to make him distinct from his father, but still bear some family resemblance. This time around I decided to add more jewelry, sort of to show off Solomon’s affluence (he’s said to have acquired more riches than he needed). I also went through and added symbols such of the Seal of Solomon (on his ring) and a priestly breastplate replica (on his smallest necklace). The white pomegranite topping his staff is a reference to the Ivory Pomegranite (even though its legitimacy is somewhat questionable). Overall I’m happy with this design, even if it is somewhat busy.
Completed 8.25.15
- September 2nd, 2015 - PKMN: Explorers of Time
Back in august I revisited a couple of older characters, and recently I’ve been replaying the game they’re from, so I’m back to drawing them again. I refined both designs a little and added two alternate designs; for Hamlet I added how he appears at the start of the story, and for Dusknoir I added how he appears after the main part of the story is over.
Hamlet completed 5/24/15
Dusknoir completed 5/25/15
- June 4th, 2015 - King David
A character for a story I’m working on here and there (which seems to be most of my original stories these days…). I had actually drawn an initial design for him around the same time I drew Samir, but only just now got around to working out the details. I’m happy with the result, though.
I tried to incorporate traditional descriptions of King David for the design; the bible describes him as “ruddy”, which indicated a tanned, reddish complexion, but this was later mistranslated as red hair. King David in the story is not so much a ghost of the historical person, but rather a manifestation of his presence in the popular imagination, so I felt that drawing from several iterations was fitting.
Completed 5.2.15
- May 4th, 2015 - mineral people
With the popularity of Steven Universe, I took it upon myself to draw some characters inspired by less well-known minerals. It was fun trying to capture the look of each mineral in the characters’ hair, though I think I succeeded more with Mesolite in that regard. Mesolite is based on a sample that I own, while with Ulexite I tried to capture the optical properties of polished ulexite (often called “TV Rock”).
Completed 3.22.15
- April 16th, 2015 - Ace Trainer Duo
Decided to give some old characters new designs yet again! I used the new Ace Trainer designs from Pokemon ORAS as a jumping-off point and tried to design my own outfits from there.
These two are age 26-27 by now. Will I ever stop designing older and older versions of these characters? probably never
Completed 10/26/14
- October 30th, 2014 - Draw it again: Ross
This isn’t normally something I would post here, but I wanted to put it up to sort of show how far my art has come in seven years. I came up with this character in 2007, and recently I decided to pick up his story again–which came with a huge design overhaul for him as well.
Here’s a side by side comparison with my first (and only extant) drawing of Ross:
The me who drew the first one would be cowed by what I’m capable of now (though my lazy background-making skills remain about the same). I realize it would be a more interesting recreation if I’d tried to redraw his original hair and outfit exactly, but I was never entirely pleased with his old design, so I decided to change things up for the new one.
Aspiring artists: Don’t give up! Draw a lot, and practice your heart out!
Newer drawing completed 10/17/14
- October 29th, 2014 - Engine Jones
It’s been a while since I last drew something for the Modern Strange Cowboy series. Maybe one day I’ll update the other three of them to reflect my current style (though at this rate I’ll have to do that every couple of years)
I’ve been struggling to get together a solid design for Engine for several years. This is actually the second time I’ve drawn him; after deciding I hated my first attempt I swept it under the rug for a bit. I’m glad I did, because I’m really really happy with this design. Over the years I had started compiling a bunch of characters whom I wanted to draw from while designing him (Tarrlok from The Legend of Korra, Silva from Shaman King, and most recently Mink from Dramatical Murder: re:connect) and though you can tell I drew a ton from Mink, I think I managed to make Engine stand apart from his influences.
Completed 9.3.14
- September 20th, 2014 - Samir
I got the idea for this character while traveling in Israel. He’s part of a story that I may never get around to expanding, but I’m very fond of his design.
Completed 7.26.14
- August 8th, 2014 - Laura timeline
Laura is an original character I came up with for the Pokemon universe. I’ve had this character for a long time, and have periodically added and changed her designs for the various stages of her life. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a while, and I feel like I learned a lot about the character while doing it. I put some thought into each design, so I put those thoughts under a read more to conserve space.
Additionally, I put each of these designs side by side with the “original” designs for comparison purposes, which you can see here.
Completed 8.7.14
- August 8th, 2014
