Character Development
I draw all the time and have sketch books full of ideas and characters.
Two characters that have stuck with me over the years were “Bob” a simple line character, and an alien cop called “Major Diz Astor”.
I had wanted to do more to develop these characters for a while and so I created projects for myself. I wanted to test my drawing and design skills, and make it easier for me to draw these characters repeatedly in the future.
Bob
I have been drawing Bob since I was a teenager. His original design was inspired by “Purple Ronnie”. I would normally draw him quickly with a biro and in the past have drawn a host of variations, “Star Wars Bob”, “Wizard of Oz Bob”, and so on.
While redesigning the character I was inspired by the illustrations of David McKee and the animation style of Hanna-Barbera. Both of these creators have quite simple styles that I wanted to capture and mix with my own approach.
I created a first version of the redesign, and in so doing I also developed a working method for this type of project. However, I was not completely satisfied with version one and so I kept going, developing version two until I came up with something I was happy with.
I intend for this character to continue to evolve naturally as I draw him repeatedly, but now I have his basic model.
Major Diz Astor
The concept for this character’s personality is a mixture of Inspector Clouseau and Duck Dodgers.
Major Diz Astor is the most inept and incompetent cop in the universe, yet somehow he has worked his way up the ranks. My original sketches of Major Diz Astor depicted him in a series of funny cartoonish situations.
My main challenges in developing this character were in his uniform and with colour. I needed colours that could work is a setting of different alien planets, but also communicated that he was a policeman and a hero.
