Overall, I definitely learnt a lot throughout my experience with creating this character. It was super fun at the beginning just doing a ton of research and finding all sorts of different references and sources of inspiration, creating and developing a story, idea and real purpose for my character.
I feel like with the design itself, there were a lot of hurdles to go through, like how it took me very long to figure out how exactly I wanted to even colour this character. But in the end, I am happy with how my designing skills developed, and I’m much happier with the current design of my character, even if the patterning is a little bit less complex than it was initially.
I feel like I could have had a little more detail or additional elements in my design, though. I think possibly because I am a little more interested in the 2D animation pipeline, I tend to think and lean towards character designs that are a little more simplified. However, for 3D, the complexity of a character isn’t always necessarily a limitation, except maybe for how much time it takes to create it.
I am happy with how my character looks on its own, but I think adding some more accessories would have been a good idea and just added that little bit more of a backstory that would be conveyed visually that may not be as it is right now. I think if I had allowed myself some more time to think about, develop and model these accessories, it could have added to the story a little better than the current simpler design.
I am happy, however, that most feedback I got was that he looked very friendly, as that’s what I was aiming for despite his dinosaur-like appearance and predator-adjacent elements in his design, such as the sharp teeth, his size and the countershading in his colouring. It was really fun combining these different elements of sea life that I liked into a new concept that I was happy with and received positive feedback from others.
In general, I was mostly happy with the results of my work, other than time constraints causing me to have to sacrifice some detail. Time management and managing my ADHD (and working with it rather than against it) is something that I’m still learning to work with. It it a shame that my technical difficulties meant I had to sacrifice some detail as well, but hopefully if I were to approach this again, I would be able to figure it out with some more experimentation and time.
However, all things considered, I am fairly happy with the results of my work and eager to hear more feedback, and hopefully grow, learn and improve from this experience. It was definitely a learning experience, and I do feel like I have a bit of a better grasp on how to create good character designs and good characters in general, as well as understanding the different elements of the character creation pipeline in the animation industry.
