For this first section of character development, I will be looking into creating the base character of what I think he should look like then move onto creating the main design based on feedback I will gather later on. Even though the clean design may look like the final one, it’s just the beginning of the development, from this it will help me to understand that lighting I’m using, affects I can add, environment based on pose and any design changes to the items he will use.
Character Moodboard
To see how far I can go with my design and see where my imagination takes me, I will be putting together a few main sets of images to focus on of items and characters that I feel help me to reach my end goal.
With this first board I wanted to mainly focus on the Tiefling look by seeing what other character designers have created to get a feel on colour schemes clothing and how the character is represented based on their uses such as magic users and thieves which is the common theme between my idea and these images. From that I can see I will be looking into using a mix of decorative robes for his magic casting skills and an image that can also come across as tactical for his rogue abilities. Based on these images they seem to have a lot of jewellery on places like their horns and tail, I too will look to include this as I thing it looks interesting on the characters, additional items will be added dependent on equipment he uses and where it is stored such as a sword on the back.
Here I have included a range if images that I feel best suit the features that I am looking to include on the design.
To help me out with how I am going to position my character I have looked into these sets of images that were created using a 3D model.
Out of these images I have decided to go with this option as I have a few ideas on where the character could be such as a bar or leaning in a wall in a tone village. I didn’t like the direction the head was facing so I decided to edit this to best fit how I want my character to look.
Character sketches
Using the pose I sketched over it in Photoshop using red to mark the outline so that I can get a good idea on what I want him to look like.
Using the outline I had created features that I wanted the character to have such as wings and a horns, after that I drew his jacket, tail and even converted his hooves to look more interesting.
feedback
For the feedback I asked a few people who were around me at the time if they could take a look at what I had created and to see what their opinions were of the base sketch ideas.
Person 1 - LR
By having wings and a tail the design looks like there are too much going on. Mug doesn’t match the size of the hands. The markings on his skin are mostly hidden by clothes and I think its over the top for what Is already included on the sketch. The horns could also be bigger and have a different shape.
Person 2 - JC
The character design is great in the essence that it draws on two different sources: the fey in the respects of the attitude and aura of fun and jovial companionship mishmashes with the Crowlian demonic appearance. The wings seem too cartoony giving it a pixie like appearance, wings on a demon should be more draconic the mug in its tail is too small using a tankard would be more appropriate. however, the design shows a more modernistic view of a demon in the 21st century. Excellent use of satanic Baphomet characteristics in leg design. Please refer to Allister Crowley’s lesser key of Solomon.
Person 3 - DS
He resembles more of an Incubus than an actual Tiefling, though his parent or infernal side could be related to one. The wings, though temporary, should be double jointed and larger. If he’s just a standard Tiefling, wings wouldn’t be an option available to him as this is a trait of the Variant Tiefling. Tieflings are typically maroon to mauve in colour as this is the most common shade of red in the 9 hells, though Tieflings can be different colours depending on what the fiend is that actually is that made them. Tiefling hair can also vary, though is typically any combinations of black to dark brown and dark blues.
From the feedback I will be sticking with the hooves for his feet to fit the Tiefling heritage of the character but I do agree with wings, if I an to keep then I would look into making them fit better onto the design but at the moment I will be removing them as DS pointed out that it wouldn’t fit the lore of Dungeons & Dragons. As for hair and the clothes, they seem to be ok so I will keep those but I will be looking to changing the style of the horns and looking int fixing the characters proportions.
Final Character Sketch
I will be going through the process of creating my character to show what steps I took to get the end results.
As I was fairly happy with the head sketch, I went over it with a size 4 brush as I like to work with thicker dark lines. I changed the horns so that it curled around his head and I added some piercings to make the design more unique and interesting. As Jayson is going to be a mix of a water Genasi and a devil I went for blue hair and eyes to match his mother and red skin with a lot of sharper features like his teeth, tongue and ears to match that. With the hair to get the textured affect I had used a very fine brush using a mixture of blue shaded to show the different strands then I went over it with the smudge tool to blend it in.
I started to add some light shading to the piercings to reflect light, I wasn’t too sure on the eyes I went with so I removed the outer red ring I put on it then converted the colours to a mixture of oranges to better fit his skin, from the results I think this looks a lot better.
To make his face look realistic I used the brush with a blurred outline with the opacity low so that I can work with dark and light tones of his skin to capture the shape I’m looking for his face to have.
As the Tiefling images that I use for reference have jewellery on their horns for decoration I had decided to add silver and gold bands to add as decoration, within them I use a leaf brush to create some interesting decorative markings.
As Jayson is going to have goat legs I looked for a range of different images online to see if I can find a similar pose I wanted for the feet, luckily there was one that matched perfectly and using this I positioned them how I wanted it to recreate the hooves onto my character.
I didn’t quite like how the hand was siting on the sketch so I decided to re draw this into a position I feel works best, later on I will look into maybe placing a magical item or a spell in his hand to show off his abilities.
Using this assortment of image references I had built my character to the image I wanted him to be . from the rough sketches I made I created cleaner ones to connect it all together and im glad to say it all work well.
The next step I took was using in the base colours of what I wanted to use, most of these are dark to reflect his darker side of hiding in the shadows and blending into a formal attire.
To save some time I thought I would look into using pre existing textures by adding the image where I wanted it and simply remove the sections I didn’t want. I decided to match the fair with his skin to blend in the look.
Whilst I was working on the legs I had some helpful feedback from a passer by saying that I should use a brown colour instead as it would match with the traditional half man, half beast type of characters, so using the Hue/Saturation option I had adjusted the colours to be a more lighter brown.
As the hair didn’t seem thick enough I matched the colours on the image and created the hairs on top to add to the thickness of the hairs.
With the vest I followed the similar pattern that can be seen on the left, for my version I decided to go for a more silver and beige range of colour to lightened up the outfit, with some shading I also created a more silver based tone to create a reflected look to represent silk fabric.
To also save time on the jackets pattern I found a fabric texture that was similar to the jacket I was using as a reference and adjusted the colour so that it was black and white ad before it was a bright red colour.
Using the transformation warp tools I had moved and adjusted the position of the image to make it blend in the the direction the arm and coat is sitting.
Using a gradient box tool I had used a dark to light blue affect to represent the magical properties the coat holds and with this I set it as an overlay layer to blend in with the colours it sits over.
For the underside of the coat I had also found the perfect fur texture and set that as an overlay too and I adjusted the colours to how I wanted it to blend with the coat.
As the game is set in the medieval times I wanted to reflect that onto an item so I used a tankard to represent the time period he is living in by creating a tattered wood finish with a rusty gold handle.
Gradually I went over each piece of the characters design adding in shading to make him look more realistic to the world.
With the descriptions of the items I was looking to create I made a base design of what I wanted them to roughly look like. The amulet gloves and jacket may change in the future depending on feedback but for the time being this is what I have made to fit with the design.
As said previously I wanted to place something interesting in his hand so looking into a range of spells Jayson possesses I went for Eldredge Blast which is a necrotic spell based on the warlocks class, this one spell is very popular with this type of character in the realm on D&D and I decided to go with it as it an Iconic feature to the character.
This is the first version of Jayson that I have created, with this I am happy with how it has turned out however, I feel like there is a few changes that I could make to improve the design.
Feedback
Here I have provided some changes to the design such as the hair and the sets of colours used for his main features. Alongside the original I will be showing these changes to people to see if they agree with one or a few of the ideas I have lined up.
Person 1 - DS
· Vest has too much detail, somewhat an offense to the eyes. Should be simpler with potentially some noise added if you wanted something with a bit more like felt.
· Goat legs on fiends are typically in 3-4 sections with 2/3 joints, creatures seen with similar features to this are Zariel, Titivilus and Bael.
· Really don’t like the mouth. His face and attitude don’t match his attire. His teeth and tongue are bizarre even for a Tiefling. (Personal Preference) Too many piercings. Also, his eyebrows are completely different to his hair. Actually, he has 3 separate hair colours; Brown, black and blue.
· His goat legs’ hair seeming all grows towards the ground rather than down his legs. The hair also seems way too uniform and doesn’t seem to have much if any deviation and fluff to it.
· Like the amulet, overcoat and gloves. Trousers/shorts might need to be a bit brighter as seeing detail on them is hard, I barely noticed the pocket on the side where the tail comes out.
· Out of the colour concept changes I prefer number 3
· I still prefer the original that’s already on the character
Person 2 – LR
· I think the piercings are a bit much for the design, I feel like you should reduce the number or completely remove them all together. Its just way too much.
· Maybe think about changing his mouth, I get he is supposed to be a Tiefling which is devil like but the tongue is a bit out there.
· I think the outfit is cool and I really like the jacket but I feel like if he was to be in a fight there isn’t much protecting him, probably look at using armour or some sort of defence.
· The tail looks a bit long, if I were him, I would probably trip or get sick of having it.
· From the colour changes I feel like number 6 looks the best out of the set, I feel like it looks more normalised and I like the fact the blue eyes stand out on the character.
· With the hair I feel like having the side parting looks really good but I feel like it should be long with maybe a few short braids like a mix of 5 and 2.
From the feedback I was given I can see their paints and I completely agree with most of them. I may go over the character to improve its quality so instead of using pre textured images I might do it from scratch but it may potentially take me longer to complete this character. As for colours I will probably refer back to my references and see how they did it to keep with the dame flow of how they race is written in the books. I will also be looking into fixing a few things like the position of the tail and mouth as well as looking over the body’s proportions as I feel like there is a few sections I could fix that don’t look right to me.
As for clothing, these will definitely be my main adjustment as they need to match the new and improved character description I have written for each item. Keeping these changes in mind I will be looking to fix these later on so that I can spend time looking into the design on his items as they will be the main features on how he works, leaving these to be incorporated into the later improved design.