Sneak Peek: Character Design Process

Hey everyone!

The next couple of Quest Packs centre around Hilltop Hold, Dryfoot's nobility, and the power struggle between Silver Spires, Lionsgate and Dragonsprings as they all try to extend their influence over the town. In this Quest Pack, we will introduce three more nobles, in addition to Gharm the Orator - Who we introduced last month. 

The design process for these characters has been particularly challenging, so we thought it might be fun to talk about how we ended up with the final designs. Usually, Niels makes the sketches and does the final line-art, and we discuss the designs during several design passes.

Kayleem Asheel, Ambassador of Silver Spires

This character has been the most difficult to get right. We wanted Kayleem to be androgynous, fanciful and full of themself. We had real trouble getting anywhere with this character at first, and kept drawing designs that were too clearly coded as female, and didn't really express much sass.

We decided to scrap all of those sketches and start from scratch. This time, I started with trying to find the right pose, and work from there. That worked a lot better!

Eventually we chose short hair and fanciful robes with glittering stars and a nice curl, with just a little bit of make-up around the eyes, for extra splendour!

Willard Twindle, mayor of Dryfoot Hill

We wanted the mayor to be a character that very much enjoys the perks of living at the upper echelons, but that still echoed Dryfoot's more rugged, swampy side. Our first set of designs went way over the top, leaning entirely on opulence and forgetting about the gritty side. These faults turned out to be mostly in the outfit. We decided to keep building on the pose, but try various outfits and hairstyles. We were also very aware of another prominent Halfling - Professor Bramblebottom - and wanted to make sure the two were distinctly different looking characters.

The final design looks stately and snobbish, with just a few rough edges - A few scuffs here and there, and the traditional bare feet!

Lord Evard Redding

A jovial character with a big personality that -loves- the tales of adventurers and having lavish feasts. His armor serves a mostly ceremonial purpose, yet Redding wears it at any occasion. Designing this character has been the most straightforward, We pretty much nailed his design in the first round with only minor tweaks required.

You may notice a Tiefling version in the sketches somewhere - We played with the idea of making Redding a Tiefling due to the relatively large population of the Lionsgate area, but we decided against it in the end. I kind of loved how silly the sketch looked, though - So I've made a quick alt version that has the horns and tail. It will be included in the Quest Pack.

Every set of characters we bring to a Quest Pack goes through a few design iterations like these. Sometimes we get it right very quickly, and sometimes it takes us a while to find the right face, shape and pose to match to the character we want to present.

I hope you guys liked this insight into our design process. See you at the next sneak peek!

Cheers,
- Niels & Rose