Industrious Illustrating #26 – Character Concept Sketching

While I’ve been trying to get back into a regular artistic workflow by working on more sprites and illustrations for “Flamechaser”, I also feel like I could benefit from exploring new ideas more. Because of that, I found some time this week to sketch out a character design for an original character I’m going to call Rashida Kuromiya. She’s a cybernetically enhanced freedom fighter who dons a helmet shaped like a canine’s head in battle.

While I haven’t gotten around to fleshing out a full backstory for Rashida, I enjoyed drawing her and I want to draw her more in the future. Eventually I want to implement her into a story idea I’m working on called “Blade of Seafoam” that follows an amnesiac super-soldier who’s traveling across a post-apocalyptic archipelago to find clues about his past. I’m not sure yet whether I want to make this idea into a comic or a visual novel, so I may have to adjust the character designs based on whether I’m drawing them just a few times to make sprites and illustrations, or a hundred times for each panel they appear in. I’m working on character turn-arounds for Blade of Seafoam for my ARTDES 220 iterative projects, so I’m looking forward to being able to share them with everyone once I’m done with them.

In other news, I recently sent applications to several conventions happening this year hoping that I’ll be able to get into at least one or two Artist Alleys. I really enjoyed my experiences at Con Ja Nai, Anime Park, and Youmacon, and I’m hoping to make more good memories and sales at future conventions!