[Tutorial] Character design process (Patreon)

Saved all my files when creating my persona and thought I'd share the iterations/process I go through when designing characters 📝

Whenever I create a new character design I try to come up with 2-3 themes to help guide me through the process. Since this persona design was for me I just took...

- my love for horns (ayoo dragon/demons girls) 

- my need for comfy clothing

- and always feeling tired LOL 

Taking those three things and doodling without a care in the world. I see what I can nail down on the first try. I NEVER go with my first designs because I know they'll improve the more I work on them. But what you see below was just me spitballing ⤵

Horns  ✔

Sleepy eyes from always feeling tired ✔

I remember not feeling any of these at all, but the spontaneous drawing of the star earrings stayed in my design from here on out. 

Here were the next set of doodles right after those!

Waaaaaaaay better. Here I thought "okay yeah the earrings and short hair are definitely staying"  Was still iffy on the horns here, but this is still the experimenting stage, so that's okay.

So next we move to 'my need for comfy clothing' and what would I wear 100% of the time if I could? A hoodie/jacket 😎 PEAK COMFORT!!

(Sorry for the watermark)

but then I thought "I see a lot of vtubers/persona's with jackets/hoodies......" (Also, looks at Bibi)  

[Also, before moving on if you create a design with elements that are commonly used who gives a fuck. Bibi has a hoodie herself, but for this design I wanted to see what else I could come up with.]

I still was feeling the jacket though, so I did a small doodle with it. Added a dragon tail as well (dragon girls rise up)

At this point in the stage, I was struggling with the clothing and something I'd be happy with. After doodling these I sat the design aside for about 1-2 months. Trying to force myself to come up with something just makes it worse. 

I did make a change to the horns! Wasn't feeling the bigger ones plus I wanted to save that for a future oc design (COUGHNYXCOUGH), so instead, I took Nyx's small horns and put them on myself LOL

⬆ (I'm playing it cool, but this was literally me when I couldn't think of the clothes)

But after gathering new references and coming back to the drawing with a fresh mindset...

I realized I loved cardigans more than hoodies/jackets and actually wore them 100% of the time LOL. This is also when I started to get into cage bra's IRL, so I added that to my design as well. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaand then from what you've already seen before......

✨ The final design ✨

- my love for horns (ayoo dragon/demons girls)

self-explanatory! I could have experimented with the horns more, but I'm quite happy with the small ones

- my need for comfy clothing

shorts, cage bra and comfy cardigan

- and always feeling tired LOL

sleepy eyes or maybe RBF

Like most character designs of mine, she went through a lot. This is the first time I've saved design drawings from start to finish, so it's fun to see.  

Anyways, hope this was fun to see! I didn't go over colors and how I choose them which is something I'd like to do in the future!

If you have any questions/would like to see other stuff like this feel free to ask me below!