I decided to start with designing the heads because I already had a fairly good idea of how I would make their body differ and I wanted to focus on the head because It is an important part of how we read emotions and what a character be like ( not to say the rest isn't just as important). I started with general heads from either one before focusing on each of them individually and eventually decided.
Once I had the heads I moved on the the bodies and looked at having opposing shapes into the bodies with an inverted triangle for the tall stretched out sister and a squat triangle for the little sister that would be more rounded. I also made a mood board around this time comparing punks to little girls to look at clothes styles. Even with the mood board I had a hard time deciding what the little sister should wear and eventually looked towards my own sisters interactions and remembered that when my older sister left home my little sister would often make raids into the former's room and "borrow" the clothes left behind. This gave me the idea that the little sister would actually aspire to be a punk like the older sister but fail because of her naivete by wearing wellies instead of boots, having the clothes not torn up and badges of happy things that she liked rather then that other things the sister wore.
Once I had decided pretty much what they would look like I developed some sketches of them in a pose that helps to illustrate the ways in which they are different. As well a physical attributes I know from my background in drama that the main parts that make characters interesting a different are attributes like the gait (walk) of a character. The inclination of the head and body tension all of which should also be considered when designing a character just as much as when acting or animating. I had to think about the characters personalities which is something I always thought about throughout the project and what kind of person they would be like. In this pose you can see the laid back nature of the older sister coming through in the non-nonchalant walk as the energetic enthusiastic little sister strides with purpose in front with arms out high with small tight fists.
After I had a pose I knew I still had to further develop the concept so I could model it. I wanted to make orthographic but my first attempt was pretty weak so I set about drawing the character from multiple viewpoints to build up how they work. I also experimented with some other ways of posing the characters so I could explore them in more depth.
I then made some quick pose of them interacting which would be the basis of the idle animation I would make as a stretch goal. I also remade my orthographic images because they were still filled with lots of errors that would make it impossible to model from them. I also made some adjustments to the head front view to make it more interesting.
During and after this development process on paper I was also looking at values and colour in the digital format deciding to go straight into so more polished pieces to see what I would get before going into thumbs. I made a colour reference board from pictures in my mood boards and then took swatches for potential colours to use. I have struggled with digital work for a while and still don't quite have the hang off it. knew after this that I still had alot of development of values before colour could be tried out.
I developed the values first before moving on to choosing the colours. I wanted the little sister to have lighter values and the older sister to have darker values to contrast between their personalities and styles while still having a gradient running throughout them that brought your eyes up to their head (following the dota 2 art guide). Character contrast was also experimented with in the colours as well with the elder sister having more desatutrated colours and the younger sister having increased saturation. I still wanted them to meet together somehow so I decided rather then colouring the little sisters jacket differently it would be the same color just at a lighter value.
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