Ratticus Gruel: the cold rat challenge
The drawing above is for the character turnaround project. It was based off of the prompt “A cold rat that loves taking pictures of everything. They want to see the northern lights but are afraid of fireflies.” I used pinterest to find inspirations for the design, and I used Adobe Photoshop to make the drawing itself. Ratticus was inspired off of indie style fashion and a cooler color palette.
The first step in designing Ratticus was learning how to draw rats. I looked at how others draw rats, and at pictures of rats themselves to try to get a feel for how their bodies are shaped. Their snouts in particular are very unique, and their paws have five digits, just like humans. Over all, looking at rats helped me draw them so much better than if I was just guessing.
After practicing sketching rats, I moved on to the specifics of character design. I decided things like body type, head shape, posture, and general attitude through posing. It was starting to look less generic and more like a character.
I started reiterating the design, bit by bit, to make it more memorable and well-thought out. One big thing in character design is silhouettes. If the character has a distinct silhouette, then it stands out much better than a confusing or boring one. I adjusted the pose from the drawing above to one more clear in what he rat was doing from the silhouette alone.
Now that the design was more distinct, I could move on to drawing the final version. I used the improved pose to make a more distinct silhouette and added the new ideas for the clothes.
The sketch above looks very similar to the final product. All that needed to be changed at this point is the little details that make the design look complete. I added hair and adjusted the snout for a final touch, then moved onto the final product.
The result was Ratticus Gruel, the cold rat!
Here’s all the sketches in order, so you can scroll through the progress.
