Webtoon: Character Designs

For the character designs I used the initial plans of the character designs that myself and Roxanne had planned as a basis for the characters appearance and weapons. I slightly changed these sketches to work with the characters proportions and weapons that they would be using with in the fighting panels. For example with the first designs I changed the style of the the hat and the hair to work with the tassels, as the hat before was too low for the head and the sides were too long. I also changed the shoes as I had to lower the boots so that the knee would be able to bend without going into the boot; I changed the sole of the boot as well as the spikes were too big for the shoe to be practical so I softened the sole slightly and merged the majority of the spikes together. I felt that this design worked well for the overall character with his main weapons being his fists; metal is hidden underneath the bandages. I really liked this character however I decided not to continue with this character as I felt a different character with a weapon that they could hold would be more successful in showing the destruction of the robots easily, such as the character with the hammer weapon.

Possible Fighting Character

Possible Fighting Character 

I really liked this character as the hammer weapon would work with the size of the robots, and would be able to work with the fighting scenes. I liked the idea that the hammer could be shortened into the head of the hammer by folding up the metal staff with the use of the hinges. The overall proportion of the character worked with the length of the hammer however I needed to practice drawing the hammer in the right perspective to work with the pose of the character when I transfer the character to the final comic layout. I quite liked how long and square the shape of the face is as it makes the character look older and less manga/anime stylised. I found it difficult to keep the hammer in the correct perspective to the character, I think this is due to the shapes that make up the weapons form. In order to solve this problem I can use the guidelines in Photoshop to draw the rough lines for the perspective, as when drawing traditionally it becomes harder to pin point the correct lines for the perspective. 

Fighting Character

Fighting Character

Fighting character possible face shapes

I then began to design the character for the dialogue page using Roxanne's feedback and initial designs for the characters as a guideline. I added a few changes to the design such as adding goggles and changing the hair slightly adding more flicks and curves to the hair. I felt that the hair worked well apart from the bottom right design of the character smoking as the hair needed to be shaped and defined more for it to work much like the previous sketches. I liked the main torso for the character however the arms appeared short and too thin to work with the rest of the body. In order to solve this problem I needed to elongate the arms and thicken the muscle to make it work successfully with the rest of the composition. I felt that the profile was the most successful design on the page as I preferred the shape of the nose and the size of the eye compared to the design above it in which one of the irises is larger than the other. I then started to sketch fighting poses for the main character in the fighting panels, I used quick sketchy lines to try and capture the movement which worked well as I was able to concentrate on the shapes and position rather than how neat the line is and missing the appearance of movement with in the stance. I preferred the jumping pose in the top center as I felt that it would work well with the weapon that the character uses, I also liked the bottom right pose as it could work well within the final layout of the comic with preparing to jump to attack the robots from a profile however in order for this pose to work I would need to make the figure jump slightly from the floor to give that impression and lead nicely to the next panel. 

Dialogue Character

Quick sketches of possible fighting poses for the characters