Your Early Alternate Versions of Characters

[kristintipping7]

My stories usually go through many many iterations before I actually figure out what the f*ck I'm doing. Sometimes it's to the point where the thing I end up with bares little resemblance to my original idea. One of the upshots of this is that aspects of my characters including race, gender, sexual orientation, personality, backstory, abilities, and in the case of my newest comic age tend to change between drafts. Allie of Evil Witch Allie, was origonaly going to be in her teens, but I realized the story works much better if she's a child. It makes her claim of being a witch seem less insane, among other things.

Early version of the character.

Later version

Whats the most you've ever changed one of your characters, and what was the logic, if any, behind that change? Was it a natural progression over time, or was it a conscious decision?

[Tanisha]

In Model Student the early versions of of my charas Kaiya was back in 2014 where I pretty much pulled them out from another story I made and made them into something completely different. At first Kaiyas hair was based on my own.
First concept:

Thennnnn I wanted Kaiya have something strange about her hair so I put sharper strands on the sides! The uniform also changed a bit since I didn't think I would enjoy drawing something with soooo much detail to it! She also went from a light brunette to just plain blonde since I just couldn't be bothered with toning it for pages
Current:

[TrustyShamrock]

this isnt really a different version thing. but i sorta switched some characters. first i was gunna have the main girl character be this girl:

Graeme (whose name was Moira at first). but the main guy was gunna be a alien/black hole scifi kid and Graeme looked waaaay too interesting compared to him if she was suppose to be the suburban earth girl. plus she was too pretty and confident and it wasnt what i was going for. so i turned Graeme into the snarky popular girl at school and switched her out with
Parsnip:

whos a lot plainer lookin which went better with her grumpy loner outcast personality that i wanted for the story. but i still really like Graeme so i try to get her in the story as much as i can

[panistheman]

Capefall started out a lot more cartoony than it is now.

This is what the girls originally looked like:

This is what they look like now:

I like the more detailed realistic look and it keeps the characters looking consistent between panels, although it's harder to draw.

[legendriders96]

Oh, this is such an interesting topic. Almost all of our charas went through a lot of change, so we actually started a project about this on our dA accounts. We currently have this one.

He started off as a protagonist in a random series about aliens (????? I mean what even), then was moved to the main project instead. Literally everything about this particular chara changed, from the name, species, personality, clothes, to general role and importance, more than once. XD Basically, the only thing remaining constant was the gender and blonde hair. They were mostly conscious decisions, what felt right for the current story/role.

Wish we had time to draw more of these, they're really fun.

[Inspector_Spinda]

After the second concept, I had to simply it cause I was bad at drawing. Then I changed it back

[demthorshie]

This is one of the oldest versions of Roxy I have. This was way before Cosmos Song ever became a comic and was created during the conception of the story's script.

[MrsBartender]

Hm, I used to look a lot more like this

Thank you Vinru <3

but now look more on the lines like

Thank you Rox <3

[awsumlife01]

here is Crystie from The secret life of crystal

[vanessa0802]

first it was this
but then i started caring about my comics and went to this

[elixiadragmire]

heres a ... earlier version of teb ...

compared to the current version

the difference between them are many, mainly story and origin related but appearance and demeanor are very similiar (even if she extra impulsive now)

[Mharz]

I've unearthed some of my old character references from 2013 and 2014

The Angel with Black Wings

Silver

[stephensharpe707]

It's so interesting to see how things develop over the years, probably why I love concept art.

Here's some then and now shots of some of my characters from 2013 and present day.

The main reason for the change in direction for me, was that my uni lecturers at the time had been watching what we posted to our art blogs, one of them quietly took me aside and basically said it's not working out, you'll have to do better. This was around about the same time we had our final major projects, and my art style was all over the place. I took a step back, simplified everything down to something I knew I could keep fairly consistent and arrived at my current look. I think I must have deleted everything else I had because I had to pull these from an old blog.

[vanessa0802]

i did it again whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

[JKNNKL]

omo i love these sort of things!!

i drew this in 2013

then i was very lazy to make a new character for a comic so i just reused it!! : d