How to design a character

The Prince of Artemis V was one of Jennifer Brozek's most beloved short stories. In any comic book collaboration, the author puts a lot of trust in the illustrator. When I work as an illustrator, I do my best to be worthy of this trust. And in this project, I also wanted to ensure the fans of the story were also happy.

What may surprise most people is I started working on the characters before reading the whole story. It was more important to read the character description from the script. And this is how Jennifer described Hart.

Hart: 13 year old boy with brown hair and brown eyes.

Middle height, average size.

Stoic look on face most of the time.

Clothing is drab browns and grey. Long sleeve shirt and pants.

So I took that description and added these notes.

At 13 Adam’s Apple will generally be seen, character slightly gangly to show age.

6 heads tall/1 3/4 heads wide

Then I thought of how I could draw a kid that was an everyman type character, yet still could show the depth of that Hart needed.

He needs to have larger than life eyes to show all emotions required for the story. I knew I would show nostrils and that he'd have somewhat a prominent chin--though his chin would be pointed keep him looking age appropriate.

And here is one of my first character sketches which includes the pallet.

It wasn't perfect, but I knew this was the character. Then I went on to the other characters. So that's how I do it. In my next blog post, I will show how to draw his face step by step.