MI Stuff- Development pt 3 (Patreon)

Development pt 2 is here

This development discussion is going to center around the WORST character design process I've ever had, haha. That would be Kalla.

So, part of designing characters is to make them both instantly recognizable and instantly memorable. You should get a sense of who they are from a glance... for Angora from The Meek, for example, ideally you'd think of fresh, youth, spring, etc. For a character like Mike you'd think awkward (proportions), unlikeable, unattractive, offputting, which are intentional choices. For Kalla though, I wanted there to be a balance of alien and recognizable? Two things that don't really go well together. An "alien" quality is generally one we don't recognize immediately, so I knew that leading and emphasizing a silhouette would be important...

However, it's also important for the elements of the design (things like shape language, body language, etc) to reflect their character as well. Originally my key was "gorilla" for the familiarity and for the dangerous strength. There's even a hook in Chapter 1 to subliminally massage the concept in there... I also wanted some element of a cat, or some other enigmatic or unreadable animal. And I also wanted some visual that would show purpose or finesse, which I decided early on should be hair-related. You can see from the 2014 set that I was also playing with the crest idea; that comes from therapsids, who have some very powerful head/ jaws and also those triangular tails that I find very economical, haha. They also have a primal feeling so I tried to cut the gorilla with some animals that came from even further back on the timeline. (Fun note: I sent the 10/27 image to Hiveworks back when as part of my application~)

However these all looked really annoying to me. Mostly because they all had humanoid expressions. I just truly hate sci-fi where the aliens have people faces... I understand it if you have a wardrobe budget in the 60's, but in comics there is no reason (other than laziness) to rely on a humanoid face. But I couldn't find a way to put in a cat mouth without making the face immediately read "cat," or giving the alien's face sexy lips.

So I did something I've never done before, which is ask another artist for advice... I commissioned my friend Silvermender, who is an incredible creature/ everything artist, to do some drawings based on the bottom left drawing. She returned some really powerful sketches that had a strong mantid feel to them as well, which managed to snap me out of my rut... here is a story where I was already investing time building this anticipation of insects and water, and I wasn't even taking advantage of those elements at all, because I was so stuck on the previous vision of gorilla/ cat. Surely there were other animals with unreadable, predatory expressions to draw from.

And then it was suddenly December 2015 and I still didn't have my answer. HAHA

To be continued*

*(spoiler I figured it out like two days before I had to draw Page 1 of our current chapter HAHhahaha I'm a sham)