Elf Story Character Designs (Patreon)

There’s a good reason why this description is so long :D It's because all of these characters are really dear to me. Even if they aren’t completely finished yet. I wanted to have a world that I could fill with these small, cute, short people.

With this collection of sketches I had an opportunity to show a bit of a character design process on one hand. Not all of these characters have many sketches yet, because this is all I could come up for the first try.

Here are a few really short bios about aaaaall of them. I couldn’t draw everything that I came up with or wrote down yet.  

Arthur: He’s a forest elf, blessed with such strong abilities that everyone's looking up at him. His abilities are closely related to nature, and he uses them only for good, and he never runs away from a fight. He’s heroic, always protecting the weak and nature. He’s very friendly, and the color of his leaves varies with the seasons.

Rudy: Arthur’s best friend, who can be very supportive, and the most terribly unbearable creature Arthur’s ever met the same time. Their friendship started at a young age, and since then they like to sleep snuggling close to eachother.  

Rudy loves to cook, and he's a really good chef, but he mostly cooks what he likes. He can be a living backpack and a toolbox when the situation requires. He can cough up small things or even tools. (Or packed snacks which he often offers to others, but well…not many accepts them.)

Dina: A young water fairy who was brave enough to break the family tradition and left her little lake home. She’s kind, lively, and fairly brave, and it’s also important for her to help everyone, even if it’s just watering some flowers for elders. She’s quite calm in nature, but there are situations which makes her water boiling, literally. She deeply respects Arthur and looks up at him very much.

Marceline: She’s a powerful magician and a member of a secret wizard sect. At one point she felt that she didn't really belong to anywhere, so she started to wander the world alone, like a lone wolf. Unfortunately while she was a member of the sect, she learned a few really bad habits, but she’s trying to overcome them. With more or less success. She’s really interested to become a “good guy” in everybody’s story, but she really needs to learn a lot about the world and about the people.

Bird folks: Common dwellers of this world. They live as peacefuly as possible, there is no more pacifist species than them. If they’re in any danger, they often need outside help.
 

Marko: One of the king’s councilor, with an extremely low self-esteem. He doesn't want too much from life, he just wants to be happy as any other bird folk around him. But he doesn't know how to achive that. And in the story he will become an unfortunate candidate for a horrible experiment.  

King Pierrot: King of the bird folks, who does morally questionable things in secret.   

And here’s some extra description :D

These characters have a pretty interesting origin. I had a Rayman fancomic way back then called the “Rayman and the Gate of the Moon”. I designed these characters based on those old fan characters, to replace them and rewrite the story into my own.

That comic still exists, I haven’t removed it, you can still can find it on my DeviantArt account. And even if it’s a chaotic mess, and greatly primitive in many aspect, I still have fond memories about it. (Look at it at your own risk though.) I remember the reason I abandoned that project was that I wanted to find my true potential in personal projects, and to built those on original characters, not on fanart.
 

I recycled some things for the old designs because I liked them. Like proportions, facial expressions, some personality pieces, relationships, or the role of certain characters. I wanted something new and different, but I didn’t intend to throw everything out in the trash. I just wanted to build something new on the old base.  

A little list who was who in the old fanart comic.

Arthur - Rayman

Dina - Chili (She wasn't a fan character, but I placed her into a different comic, called “The Tree of Life”.)

Rudy - Globox

Marceline - Mansel

Bird folks - Teenies

Marko - A simple teensy

King Pierrot - A teensy king  

I feel like a big idiot to tell you guys all this, but I hope I could give a little nostalgic feeling to my veteran watchers :D

Thanks for the reading!