Character glow up appreciation!

[abigaillmartin]

Just a little meme I made showing the design improvements of my character Charles Wellington!

Have your character designs changed over time?

Lemme know! Let’s appreciate it!

[tarraxahum]

Now that's a glow up!

My comic hasn't been going for long yet, but some characters did change since I've first designed them and did my first try-out comics with them.

Namely, Ezra:

She changed both in design and in personality, although some key beats I kept the same. Like the name, the color scheme, the blind eye...

And also, and this is gonna be a teaser for the upcoming March episodes, but there's Dawn:

She went from a calm optimistic flower to a sarcastic perpetually exhausted 'medic' (aka the one with brief survival knowledge) and honestly I'm quite happy with her place in the story now. And her design. One of my favorite types to draw.

[abigaillmartin]

Yes! Now that’s what I’m talking about! YEAHAHAH!

[igneriss]

All my characters had a glow up just by my drawing skills getting better especially guys. And all characters now look few years older than when I started drawing.

...but as for design changes, the only one I can think of is my main character, Kestrel. She actually has a both glowup and glow down hahah cx she gets a new design after few chapters (one with 'chapter 17') and it could be considered a glow-up. Still, it's not used all the time and usually she's in her old clothes. And here we have a glow-down, because now they have way less details than before I've been removing them slowly throughout the story and only now realised the difference! but to be honest I like the one with less details more. Also, she still has the mask, just not in this panel.

[UnTalAugustus]

His design changed a lot just after the first episode, mostly his head. I didn't notice how much different he looked until I re-watched the first chapter. That's one of the reasons I redrew it completely, the other being that I wanted to make it look better in general.
Here's a comparison between the original chapter 1 and the one re-drawn after finishing chapter 4.
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Another comparison, without colors or shadows:

And finally his 'SuperHero look' the first time I design him and how he looks in the comic. In this case his design was simplified, but I like it better that way:

[darthmongoose]

It's time for.... you all know it... you all love it... "Oh my god, Kate you've been drawing the same OCs for twenty years!?"

Here we go... with the most vintage of all the Rekki arts (with bonus spiky Subo):

Then something a little later, once I'd decided she was getting her own comic... (Side note, I do like that several things 19 year old me wrote about Rekki here are still true now. She's still 5'3", her personality is still pretty much that, her birthday is still in autumn... though I think she's a Scorpio now hahaha!). Also the fact that Rekki always has a spikey fringe and two long bits of hair at the front and then the back can be worn in any style, loose or up did continue basically forever.

A later Rekki with a very recognisable design. The sword has a point though! Unacceptable! (it is the correct colour at least, bright red with brass fittings). This was the "Rekki has freckles" era. I'm kinda "meh" about freckly Rekki (Frekki?) but it was a whole thing I was doing when I was around 20. She'd become left-handed at this point. Her sword always goes on the right, and she always has that really exaggerated stance when drawing it. Ahh this one one of the first art prints I ever sold! Nostalgia~!

This one has Sarin on too because it's a chapter cover from the old version of Fan Dan Go (it got rebooted twice, then rebooted again 9 years later as Errant). Apparently 20 year old me had NO IDEA how tall 6 foot is compared to 5'3" because this Sarin is a goddamn giant. These outfits are absolutely horrible. I'm judging you, past me. The drawing isn't too bad though at least. Also this is where the little crease under Rekki's eyes just started to creep in to hint at the fact that she's an insomniac. It got more pronounced over time and subsequent reboots.

Now this is a more recognisable Rekki from when I was about 24. I barely changed this design when I rebooted the comic as Errant...

As you can see! Basically just some tweaks to the colours to pull things together a bit better and look less garish. Subo is here looking a whole lot less spiky. The pose on this cover is a callback to the one on the previous cover, because yay! First print book of the reboot evokes the print book of the original! One consistent change is that Rekki's fringe tends to have fewer spikes now, and they're a bit softer.

Bonus chapter cover of Rekki's latest outfit with her hair down and a more rebellious, casual look to perhaps reflect how she's feeling about her position as a knight right now. AND she's back-to-back with Sarin again! (this was kind of a deliberate callback....for...um....basically just me, because who even remembers the old-old version of Fan Dan Go ). Sarin has a way cooler sword now, and much better clothes.

I feel like I could make another entire one of these posts just about Jules... but I'm gonna stop here for now.

[abigaillmartin]

That is such an improvement there! Good job!

[igneriss]

Thank you!
I did some digging and found even earlier Kestrel's desings when I look at them I feel like she had a glown-down in the current version, but at least now she has a fancy feathered cape

[igneriss]

It would be fun to see the oldest versions of Rekki and Subo as background characters in one of the panels

[darthmongoose]

That is an absolutely brilliant idea. I should definitely do that! Thank you!

[BlairFujin]

Hm... I don't really change my ocs designs... the only exception being Vampire Prince, which had it's first version I was drawing in middle school to high school and then I rebooted it here on tapas 3 and half years ago, with some concepts removed, some characters replaced with completely different ones, different plot... pretty much just some main characters and general setting have stayed the same over the years 'xD but some characters (that hadn't really made an appearance in the first version but I had them planned) came back to the new version but after a drastic makeover

I mean like there's pretty much nothing left of initial design drastic 'xD

Hm, now I feel like I should check at which point Tirau's eyes during day started being dark blue... xD

[VibrantFox]

A lot of my characters outside of h+h are still cooking so I know there's likely more changes to come however my absolute favorite character glow-up are Sophie and especially Ava from Welcome to Harewood

like this was first instance of drawing them out back in 2019

then came back to em with an update around 2021

then their final designs here that i drew just last year

Like i definitely fought with Ava the most coz after a while I was like "I'm not doing a white girl with locs" plus it felt like my brain was still really stuck on Robin and Dai from JtN hence the fixation on the hairstyle back then so after I let em cook and tried again it felt like striking gold and I've loved how he looks ever since then. Ironically Sophie probably changed the least just better looking skin tone and hair that imo better reflected the whole werewolf gimmick she's got goin on. But yeah these two r my fave oc glow up~

the only thing now is figuring out how to draw his wings...

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Yes. I watched Rozen Maiden.

Her design was extremely weird

[IndigoShirtProd]

I like how the sword pretty much stayed the same. Characters always go through massive changes, but somehow weapons can be spot on from the start.

[TAMAnnoying]

Im very sad cause after 10ish years and 5ish computers it looks like ive deleted or lost most of my "firts drafts" of oasis and even deleted the old one that used to exsist on another website. XD so i cant share the old pages of my highschool years or the crappy character sheet refs of my collage years but ive been working on it for about 5 years now so figure thats good enough to show off dimitris "glow up" as his hair style changes

Yall can judge if hes looking more or less scraggly XD

[aprilferrero]

So these are my three main characters. I think they glowed up pretty good, lol. I started Nocturne 21 almost 20 years ago. I have NO idea why I decided to keep going with it, instead of just throwing it in the trash where it belonged. I was just having a lot of fun with it. I’d make new pages and pass it to my friends and they’d read it, leave fun comments and pass it a long and I just kept making more. At some point I was in college and I’d spent so much time on this story I was like “let’s try and make it actually good”. I’m really glad I stuck with it. I love being able to look back at my old shitty comics and see real progress, even if the originals are god awful, lol.

[TheLemmaLlama]

I'll be lazy and quote a previous post

How much have your ocs' designs changed?

4 of the characters on my current bitwam cover were recycled from an old visual novel idea called "Silly Research Society". I suspect you'll be able to identify who the carryover characters are from the following:

bitwam cover (2021):

SRS concept art (2016)

Though I forgot to mention a 5th character, sort of; the girl in the top middle of the 'Silly Research Society' sketchdump with the green pants was called Myrrh, which is the same name as the purple-haired person in bitwam. They're basically completely different characters though apart from the name, so it doesn't count (Unlike Alana, Emma, Dolly and Seth who actually did evolve from their SRS counterparts :P)

[bunny]

I'm digging those braids

[bunny]

Thats such a huge glow up there ! Love how much depth this glow up added

[rumpenstiltzkin]

ah its always fun to see character glow ups! so many nice ones

this is early art of my two main characters, between 2014-2016ish something

and this is them now