calebmichelle-digicharillstratin

[calebmichelle-digicharillstratin]

We were put into groups and as a group we filled in a character brief to give to another group and have that group create our character in 3 different styles, Mobile Game Character, Animation Character, and Children's Storybook Character. The character brief my group got to design was a character named Amber Swift:

First things first we got together as a group to decide who would do which design. I did the Animation Character. After that we discussed what the character would look like as we were a little confused because the brief said that she was a blacksmith made of fire but floated above the ground so we were unsure of how her body would look because being a blacksmith requires arms but she hovers above the ground so we didn't know if the client envisioned her with legs or not. Eventually we decided that she should have arms and no legs, sort of similar to the shape of a traditional cartoon ghost. For my character, I took inspiration from the Flame Princess from the cartoon Adventure Time:

Even though part of the description of the Animation Character was that they had black outlines, I decided to make my characters outlines orange like Flame Princess. The brief also described Amber Swift as having a pony tail so, just like the Flame Princess, I decided to have my version of Amber Swift's ponytail stick upward as heat does rise. Before designing our characters our team had to decide on a colour scheme. Our teammate Janet found this colour scheme and shared it in our groups Microsoft Teams chat (ignore the oranges):

Now that we had a colour scheme, I started to create my first draft of Amber Swift. I decided to give Amber a hammer and an apron so she looked like a blacksmith (even though logically an apron, hair-tie, and wooden handle of a hammer would all burn in contact with flame but thankfully this is an animated character and there is no room for logic in cartoons). Here is my first Amber Swift Draft:

After successfully completing our first drafts we sent them off to the groups who provided the briefs and we looked at their designs as a group and provided feedback on their designs as we received feedback for ours.

Now that we received our feedback we begun redesigning our characters according to the feedback. Since my character was the animation character, I needed to use black outlines instead of red and add some texture to the fire. The client also wanted me to add shadow to the character but I decided against it because fire doesn't cast a shadow. I gave Amber a larger smile and replaced her fire eyes with plain white eyes with black dots for pupils. Here is the final Amber Swift design:

[calebmichelle-digicharillstratin]

Photoshop Shortcuts

B - Brush Tool

E - Eraser Tool

1-0 - Opacity Settings

[ ] - Change Brush Size

Option_Delete - Fill layer with option colour

⌘Z - Undo

R - Rotate Canvas

Space - Pan Canvas

⌘D - Deselct

W - Magic Wand Tool

Drew over Duck character whom I named Craig.