Starting My Character Design
I started by experimenting with a similar design but with two differently aged characters.
I played around with form to make another version but with a more awkward stance adding more personality to the character. For the third design I explored the idea of creating a slightly older character. I exaggerated her features giving her a huge scarf that almost seems like its suffocating her with large glasses. This idea stemmed from the idea to make her awkward and exaggerating her features almost weighs her down adding to her posture! In the forth sketch I liked the idea of adding exaggerated buck teeth as it was a feature I thought would stand out. The last design was for a sciency character wearing a lab coat much like Fiddleford Hadron McGucket in the show!
Although I liked some of these sketches I wanted to take my character in a different direction and try make it fit within the world of gravity falls more!
While exploring different outfit ideas I found references for boy scout outfits and wanted to experiment with them for my character. I thought it would fit with the forest theme of the show and make the character more interesting visually. I started by researching different boy scout groups in America and referencing their uniforms. Some recurring items I seen was the neck scarf, lanyard, shirts and shorts with long socks. I considered these features for my newer designs.
These were some of my initial (very rough) sketches. I experimented with hat designs, outfit designs, hair types and body types
More Design Options
I explored different colour variations using my previous research into uniforms for reference!
Without Glasses
I loved these designs. I stuck with the prominent buck teeth and decided on curly hair. I chose to make him rounder to make him appear younger. For my turn around I referenced the shows concept art turn arounds!
With Glasses
“Final Design”
I included versions with and without glasses to aid me when modeling the character. This helped me get a good idea of what the eye sculpt would look like. I settled on the more colourful option as I felt it fit best in the world of gravity falls.
I was going to use this as my final design for my model but after receiving feedback I decided to change some aspects of my design. One bit of advise I got was to exaggerate the features more to better resemble the gravity falls style! The problem with this design was that it didn’t look like gravity falls, the head was much to small, the arms were too realistic in proportion and the body type was nothing like a traditional gravity falls child character.
When redesigning I made sure to keep my references open
My Final Design!!!
I experimented with hat designs but decided I preferred the version with no hat
In this design I referenced dipper and mabel, characters in the show to try follow the style more closely. I made the head bigger, made the arms thinner and exaggerated the mismatched glasses. I used this image reference for my model.
Sculpting introduction
We worked on sculpting some of our ideas to get used to the feature. I started with basic models, practicing with parenting and joining objects together
I practiced modeling my characters head.
