Concept Art and Character Development

 

    Concept Art is one of the most awesome character development tools in the box. There's nothing that brings a new toon to life like seeing him or her stare back at you from a sketchbook or computor-screen. Still, it's more than just the visual effect that gives concept art a unique value. There are all sorts of little things that add up to contribute to its value.

   You don't have to be a stellar artist to use concept art for character development. You can do anything from scribbling down your character in a notepad to using a character-creator or avatar-creator on the computor. Anything that helps put your idea into a visual form (even if you're the only one who can decipher it :P ) will go a long way to fleshing out your character.

   The most important thing about drawing up your character, is that it makes you think about him. You have to answer questions like...

• "What's my character's style?"
• "What kind of gear does he carry?"
• "What's his attitude like?"
• "What's his background/ethnicity, and how does he express his culture?"
• "How does his physical appearance affect his life, and vice-versa?"

 Questions like this put the concept in concept art.

I'm going to use my character Blake Breil'lya Turncoat (pictured left) as an example. Before Blake ever hit the digital world, I cooked up her concept in pencil and paper. The first question I had to answer was at what point in her life I was going to depict her. Now, even though I always intended to write her story from birth, for concept-art purposes, it was better to depict her as a small child. This is because her personality would be just starting to show through at that stage in her life. Regardless of where you plan to start your story, you should draw your concept art to depict the point in your character's life that excites you the most.    When thinking about what she might look like, I kept in mind her background. Scince she's the daughter of two existing characters, I tried to make her look crossed between the two to start with. I gave her her Lawrence's eyes and cheekbones..  Nyx's nose and lips (and lekku. Obviously.)...  and generally just tried to tie it all in together with something else that was uniquely Blake. Also, scince she's a halfbreed, I wanted to give her a little bit of quirky weirdness that I didn't explore with the other children. She's a mute, and one of her lekku is longer than the other. How does this affect her life? Well, I figure she'd be smart, but a little backwards, so I tried to give her a sort of inquisitive expression. I also gave her freckles (though they're hard to see because I couldn't scan the picture properly) because, overall, the picture I was getting from her was a cute-and-homely sort of sense. If something unplanned comes up in the concept art... roll with it! You could be surprised with how you like the result.    The clothing I threw on her was something that reminded me of another cute-and-homely character I remember from one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden. The character, Mary Lennox, was a lonely, spoiled English girl who wore prim, plain dresses in the beginning of the book. I thought it would be nice to draw a couple subtle parallels between the two, for anyone who would get the reference. Fun fact: Blake Breil'lya Turncoat's original working name was Blake Lennox Turncoat, until events in Roleplay lead her parents to name her after a recently-deceased friend and protector Sayon Breil'lya

One last thing before we go...

   Concept art isn't for new characters alone! It can be used to explore relationships between existing characters, new chapters in their loves or stories, moods, scenarios, or anything else you can think of. As long as you get yourself thinking, and asking yourself questions. Most importantly, enjoy it! When you like your characters, it's the first step to creating a story that others can enjoy, too.