Character Design - Raine

Raine Design

As the potential main character on display, I really felt that I should spend a lot of time developing the character of Raine.

 (Side note: I chose the name Raine over Aqua (my earlier idea) as recently in Kingdom Hearts; Birth by Sleep, one of the characters was named Aqua. I did not want people to consider my design to be an imitation of that character so I chose Raine. This wasn’t really too bad as the character is inspired from a raindrop so it seems suitable).

When I was designing Raine, I took a gamble and began sketching directly onto the document and didn’t use a scanned structure. It could have been a massive blow had the design failed miserably, but I was impressed with the end result and felt that the experience of building the character from scratch really improved my proficiency with my Tablet.

It was interesting as the finished character felt almost military in the way she looked and her stance. This was partly due to changes made to her stance in the middle of the design, but I am satisfied that she looks like this as initially her backstory would have been that she was an seasoned ‘Flush’ raced. Now I can describe her character as a police/ ex-police character which has either found a career on the racetrack or she could even be undercover. Nevertheless this opened up a series of options that could not just craft the characters look but also her personality.

Upon showing it to people, I found that the feedback I received was that the characters legs were not curvy enough, her legs in general seemed “action less”, the arms were too short and that her feet were too big. I was surprised at some of this, so I looked at several character designs – in particular the protagonist design in Final Fantasy X-2 and Fable 3. I couldn’t really see an issue with the arm length, and while the feet were too big, many games use exaggerated proportions to craft a unique style. Still it wasn’t something that I had aimed for so these were definite issues with the design that I hope to address later in another design.

One change I did make was to have the character wear a biker jacket. The design seemed far too bare without it and when added, it suited the character. This is the ‘final’ version (should I not have time to address it at a later date).

I definitely want to create at least two characters for the riders so I will look back over my mind map and see if there are any inspiring themes that I would like to advance