Initial Character Design

For this assignment, I went about designing the character that I would be animating for my final. It is my hope to use these animations for my Thesis/Games project, a 2D game set in future Japan and featuring modern ninjas as the main characters. This character is named Fukurou, which is Japanese for Owl, and he serves as the protagonist's mentor. In our tutorial level, he will be issuing directions to the player and demonstrating some essential techniques.

I had two goals in mind while designing this character -- first, I needed to imitate the style that my team's lead artist was drawing the rest of the game in. He chose to draw in a cartoon-style, with our characters having disproportionately large heads and eyes, and small bodies with little muscle or figure definition. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm used to drawing in a style that tries to be more photo-realistic, so this cartoony-style of exaggerated proportions and minimal details was very foreign and difficult to me.

My second goal was to incorporate elements of the character's namesake in his design -- I wanted him to look somewhat avian, so that people would look at him and think of a bird, if not an owl specifically. To his effect, I made his eyes and pupils even larger than they would normally be, and a curved, pointed nose not unlike an owl's beak. I also gave him a hairstyle similar to a horned owl's ear tufts, a short, tattered cloak reminiscent of wings, and pointed gauntlet and boot armor accents that look a bit like talons.

I was relatively happy with the sketch, considering it was my first attempt at drawing in this style -- although more so with the actual character design than the drawing itself. Still, I could tell it needed work.