Concept Art
Character Turn Around
This is my first Skills Showcase project and I’m super pleased at how it turned out! When I started this project, I decided make it for the purpose of showing off my drawing skills and work on my time management, but also to design a possible character that could be used in a show or a book. Above is the finished project and below is the process of how I made it. From sketches to the final bits of shading, I shared it all with you. It took a long time to finish this project. I had a total of 30 hours to complete the entire thing, which wasn’t stressful at all (insert sarcasm here). I had some problems throughout the designing process, but I go into detail down below. Though, the main issue was time. I managed to work at a steady pace near the beginning, but I didn’t do super hot closer to my deadline. I saved the easier things for last, thinking I could knock them out quickly, only for me to take more time to complete them. Overall, this project was a very fun first experience. and I’m excited to do more!
Since I chose the character turn around assignment to use for my Skills Showcase, I was given five different prompts that described a character. The prompt I chose for this project was: A cheesy alligator that loves rainy days. They want to live in a van but are afraid of fire. I then had to design an original character based on the prompt, which is what I did…
Reference Collage
Above is a collage of all the references that I used while brainstorming ideas for my character.
Concept Sketches
Here are a few facial expressions of Sally, as well as a side profile view of her entire body. (Subject to change).
I thought it would be fun to have Sally in clothes, like the characters in the Zootopia movies. I decided to go with a southwestern look and took inspiration from the people living in Louisiana. Women can be seen wearing a long, cotton sun dress with bright colors and a sun hat to protect their eyes from the sun, as well as be fashionable. I thought a sundress would be a better fit for an alligator instead of jeans and t-shirts, which are also seen on people from Louisiana.
Line Art and Color
After doing the concepts, next was to sketch out the general shape of Sally in a front-facing angle. I wanted to draw her in a realistic way and have her stand on two legs. Since alligators have a unique body shape, it was a fun challenge. I made her stocky and muscular to represent an alligator’s strength. The hardest part to draw was Sally’s neck. Alligators don’t have a lot of neck to work with in real life and they were definitely not made to hold a big, toothy head up while standing on their hind legs. So I kinda cheesed it and made her neck longer than it normally would be. That way it could bend and her head could look forward while standing up. To be honest, I thought this made her look more like a monitor lizard than an alligator, but the more I looked at it the more I liked the finished results.
Then the line art came next. I made her tail longer since it seemed too short in the sketch above. Another difference is the tail scutes. In the concept sketch, Sally had scutes all along her tail from base to tip. The final line art drawing only has scutes on the end of her tail. I thought this would make drawing her tail from different angles a little easier, as seen from the three quartering angle line art. (There isn’t a sketch photo of the third quarter angle because it was very similar to the final line art).
Then the fun part, color! I decided to go for a more natural color pallet, similar to real life alligators, rather than the classic green color alligators are associated with thanks to cartoons. I made sure to make Sally’s eyes bright and big, which shows how friendly she is.
Kind of a last-minute detail I thought of was to give her a special skin condition. The lighter colored patches on her body are a result of piebaldism. This is where different sections of Sally’s body lack the pigment in her skin, or scales in this case, making them a pale whiteish color. She also has a small case of mosaicism, (more specifically: cutaneous mosaicism), which caused the intricate patterns on her right arm and along her snout. Not only does this give me an excuse to draw freckles on an alligator, but this ties well with the character prompt. Individuals with these types of skin conditions tend to be more sensitive to sunlight and heat. So, Sally is scared of getting burned because her skin is less resilient compared to other alligators and this results in part of her reason for her fear of fire.
The last two angles were either very easy or very hard. I had a lot of trouble with drawing the raised arm on the side angle. I haven’t drawn an arm at that angle so I was trying to not be a perfectionist. Due to time, I couldn’t spend an hour on the way Sally’s arm looks at a certain angle. Another issue was her eye. It’s positioned in the right spot, but I accidentally drew the eye brow more arched, maker her eye bigger. It’s a minor error, but an error none the less. On the other hand, the back angle was the easiest by far. All I had to do was make a copy of the front angle drawing, flip it horizontally, add and erase some lines, replaced the underbelly colors with the back colors, then add on to the existing piebald patterns to make them feel real and look natural when bending around her body.
Clothing
Here are the clothes for Sally. I was going to do a yellow dress and a tan hat, but I realized that those colors clash horribly with Sally’s own color palette. I swapped to a green dress and a blue hat, which looks better on Sally. I had a couple of complications though. Mainly, that hat was the problem. I have never drawn a sun hat like this, especially not at these different angles. The hardest angle was the front facing angle. I spent well over fifteen minutes trying to create a sun hat that didn’t look like a blob. However, I pulled through and drew a hat I could be proud of and continued to draw more clothes for the rest of the models.
Next thing is to create more detailed facial expressions and to add shading to ALL of the finished drawings.
Facial Expressions and Shading
Thankfully, I had already made some expressions when brainstorming Sally’s design so I didn’t have to waste time creating new expressions. I traced the sketches then added some color to match the full body drawings. I had to tweak some of the faces, compared to the beginning sketches. For the happy expression, I needed to thicken the snout to make it more “alligator like”. For the fearful expression, I needed to make the scutes along her neck more even and neat. Finally, the last expression. In the sketch, the expression was expressing another happy or cheerful mood when I needed something different. I decided to go with anger. Sally’s character is almost never angry, so it was the perfect opportunity practice with a face that would be rarely used.
Shading was a little difficult for me. At first, I just added another layer turned down the opacity and used a black colored brush to create the shadows on the character, giving it more depth. However, after consulting with a friend in my class, I decided to change the way I did my shading for the rest of the project.
Instead of black I used blue for the shadows! Kinda wild, I know, but my classmate brought up a good point: light doesn’t produce the color black. So, she recommended a blue color to use instead. After turning down the opacity from 100% to 10%, the change was startling. Then, when I changed the blending mode of the shadow layer from normal to multiply, the shadows looked softer and more realistic.
The shading was easier to look at now, but the angry expression didn’t convey the right emotion that I wanted. So I decided to switch the shadow color of the angry expression from blue to black again. Now the expression looks more angry than before, but it still wasn’t enough for what I had in mind.
I created another layer and added a darker shadow patch over Sally’s left eye. This seems strange, but a lot of artists will use sharp, dark colors on their characters’ faces to convey a strong emotion. I feel like I achieved that strong emotion, especially when I added the glint in the shadow of the eye. Alligators are famous for having glowing eyes when shining a light at them in the dark. I used this natural phenomenon as an added element to insure the angry expression shows as much anger as possible.
With the facial expressions done, I spent some time shading the other four pictures. I used the color blue on a different layer that had its opacity lowered, similar to how I shaded the expressions. It was relatively easy to complete, though it took A LOT of time. The parts that took me the longest, and where I made the most edits, were the clothes. Mainly the dress. The one thing I struggle with when drawing clothes, are drawing the folds of the clothes. Or more accurately, drawing clothes with NATURAL looking folds. Despite my struggles, I managed to finish shading the dresses in a way that made me satisfied.
Character GIF and Story
Finally, I made a GIF to properly represent my finished character! I also needed to write a story to describe my character. Below is what I came up with. You’ll notice it’s a lot longer than the description in the final Character Showcase image at the top of the page. That is because I took a big chunk of it out in order for all the text to fit in the limited space I had left. Here is the full version, have a read!
Sally Gator is a cheerful, friendly alligator that lives in southern Louisiana. She loves to spend her time cooling off in her kiddie pool underneath the shade of a tree, or by reading cheesy novels during the rainy season. Sally would love to travel around the country to attend book conventions with her favorite genre, but has no means of transportation that will keep her out of the sun for long periods of time. The reason for this is her skin, or rather, her scales. You see, Sally was born with a rare genetic mutation called piebaldism. This means that parts of her body lack melanin in her skin cells, causing her scales to turn pale. She also has a unique case of cutaneous mosaicism, resulting in the complex patterns on her arm and across her snout. Thanks to her condition, Sally is more prone to getting sunburned and receiving skin cancer. Fortunately, Sally was given a sun dress and a sun hat on her birthday from her parents. The clothes helped with protecting her body, but she couldn’t stay out in the sunlight forever. Which is why Sally wants a van. More specifically, an RV. With an RV, Sally could finally travel the country during the day without getting exposed to the sun’s rays. The RV would also provide a nice place to sleep during the night and she could keep her kiddie pool on top of the car. The only issue was food. Finding food wasn’t the problem, it was cooking it. Once apon a time, Sally’s uncle got his tail viscously burned while celebrating the Bonfires on the Levee during a family gathering on Christmas Eve. This is a Louisiana tradition that started around 200 years ago when Cajun settlers lit bonfires along the river to guide Papa Noël, the Cajun Santa Claus, to their homes. Sally was very young when she witnessed her uncle’s screams and smelled burning flesh, and when the doctors said that it was damaged beyond repair and her uncle couldn’t swim ever again, Sally was horrified. After that, she became deathly afraid of fire. Her fear was so great that, years later, it reached the point of Sally never going near a kitchen stove, even when the burner was off. She also stayed inside during Christmas Eve while the rest of her family lit the traditional bonfires, every year since then. AND with her skin condition, she is even less resilient to fire compared to other alligators. So, instead of cooking her food with fire, Sally would need to resort to the microwave on the RV to cook her food. Sally doesn’t mind though. As long as she can stay away from flames, she’s happy.
This concludes the process of my Skills Showcase project! I hope you enjoyed reading about the joy and struggles this project threw at me. Expect more content like this soon!