For this exercise I was tasked to create some character design for an anthropromorphic character, making sure to show them in a variety of expressions. I also had the challenge of being behind time, so I had to make sure I approached the exercise in an efficient way.
I started by exploring potential animals to humanise, and with a discussion with my wife I also started to think about characteristics and how to link character traits to the animal traits. I asked my wife to help me think of animals that might not have been turned into anthropromorphic characters in other media before. She mentioned the Serval cat, which my son was obsessed with as a toddler because of how high they can jump. This put a picture in my head of a high jumper or pole vaulter who also happened to be a Serval. This seemed like an interesting idea to explore so I decided to take that idea further.
I then did some visual research, picking out examples from other media that could help me with expressions or serve as inspiration. It also meant I had some backup ideas should the Serval not work out and I needed an alternative animal to explore.
Next I found some reference photos of servals so that I could get an idea of their anatomy. I also looked for reference inpiration about pole vaulters, so I could get an idea of the poses that they might take. This way I could start to put my character in realistic situations for his profession.
Then it was time to get going with sketching. I started by trying to study the serval's features and shapes and get an idea of how to draw them convincingly.
I followed this up by exploring how to start making the cat look more human. I played around with some expressions and head poses to see if I could get better at creating a convincing Serval at different angles. I learned a lot by doing this and found that I struggled with making the Serval look cat-like enough. It has an interesting head shape and large ears, which made it easy to make it look more like a fox or a dog at times.
I then moved to investigate proportions. Looking at the anatomy, I was able to infer the ratio of head, body and legs, and developed the sketch a little more until my athlete started to emerge. I think I got the proportions fairly correct, the character still read as a cat but had humanistic elements too.
I felt more comfortable with the character now, and so tried to experiment more with the head at different angles alongside different emotions. The most important thing I wanted to try and do was simplify the drawings, so I that I started to capture the essence without it needing to look too realistic. While all the heads do not read as the same character, I think I got to a place where I was simplifying the visual information pretty well.
Lastly, I started to experiment with some poses for the character. This was very enjoyable and I started to get the hang of posing the character in a believable way. I decided at this point to end the exercise, as I had met the learning objectives.
However, I am very conscious that this character design could be taken a lot further. When it comes to assessment time, I would like to come back to this exercise and see if I can push this character further and see if I can explore colour, shape and stylistic options with the aim of producing either a finished illustration or a character design sheet good enough for assessment.