Howdy y'all, I've been developing a new project and thought a look into my character design process might be interesting/helpful for others. I'm going to try and explain the process, which I'm not great at so hopefully it all makes sense.
Please feel free to share your own character design experiences and processes.
The comic I'm working on features multiple goblin characters, so designing the first one is also designing a template for the entire race. So the first thing I needed to do is come up with a clear idea of what goblins should be in this world and how I wanted them to be perceived by the reader. I wanted to keep the standard idea of goblins being small, weak, ugly, and a little pathetic. However, since two of the main characters are goblins and the story is primarily from the point of view of "monsters" the design also had to have some endearing qualities. Looking at my current goblin design it's clear that I have the basic goblic qualities down, but they're too ugly and wicked-looking for characters that I want the reader to connect with. So at this point I have a clear focus, design a goblin that's monsters, yet endearing, or "ugly cute," and I begin sketching.
At this point I was more or less just sketching out anything that might work, trying to find a general direction to go with.
Here, while still trying different things I started focusing more on a wide head an a 3-head height
Now that I've basically gotten proportions figured out (and settled on shorter "pig-like" ears), I set to trying out different sizes, shapes, and positions of the facial features. At the bottom you can see I've more or less nailed down a basic goblin design, although I still need to work out expressions, and build upon this general design for specific characters.
A quick turnaround and a bunch of expressions trying to figure out how to properly emote with such a huge mouth, and no eyebrows. I was originally trying to avoid moving the protruding teeth, since teeth don't move, but gave up on that idea. Also, didn't realize until way later than I should have that I should be using the ears.
