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New design. Was a lot of fun drawing this now that I have a much better understanding of equipment, even though she's not really wearing any proper tactical gear.

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I feel a lot more free after removing the restrictions that all the equipment had to have real-life counterparts that needed to be researched. This was more just drawing something that looked a bit more casual. She's even wearing a skirt! That was a big no-no for the character sheet I worked on.

 

Speaking of the character sheet. I wanted to write a bit about my thoughts while working on it, mostly just so that someday I can look back on this and see how my thoughts changed.

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The initial idea I had was pretty different than what I ended up with. Originally I was going to have a design with glasses and a ponytail.

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The entire time I was sketching the character I couldn't help but think about another character I really liked, drawn by an artist called NDTwoFives on twitter. I honestly had to keep reminding myself to steer away from how that character looked, but at the same time because I thought it looked so nice I wanted the same type of look.

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I ended up feeling like I was too concerned with the "character" when the entire point of this exercise was to familiarize myself the various types of tactical equipment one would typically carry, and so I just pulled back on the character and put more of my focus into the actual loadout. The design at this point shifted pretty heavily to enforce this new focus. The majority of my time was actually spent researching and talking with some friends who were far more knowledgable about this stuff than I was.

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By the end of the process I was actually pretty drained, because it felt like I had taken in so much information in such a short period of time. I suppose to most people who are already familiar with military equipment this isn't too difficult, but actually understanding not only what someone would typically carry on their persons, but also why they and how they would select such gear took quite a lot of time. I feel I'm much better off for it now, and it really helped me remember a bit of what it was like when I first started drawing. Everything was a new concept to me, so it look a lot of mental effort to draw even something simple, because I'd never really done it before.

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In the end the entire point of all this was to gain familiarity with tactical equipment to the extent where I could draw it with enough knowledge to know what I wanted to include, and what I wanted to omit. That's why the new design was so much fun, because despite the fact it's lacking 90% of the gear that the character sheet had, at least it was a decision to skip it rather than excluding it out of ignorance.

 

Oh, and on a final note, because it would bother me too much if I didn't mention it. The full loadout on her plate carrier is actually not really that suitable for someone of that occupation. She's only carrying four 7.62 magazines, when the standard loadout for combat would be closer to 7 (6 on the plate carrier and 1 in the gun). I was a bit conflicted on this as I wanted to leave the side plate empty for her draw, and didn't want to double-stack the front 3 because she would be further from the ground in a prone position. Either way, she's not carrying enough ammo, but that's okay because she's an expert marksman, 1 bullet 1 kill :)

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@Penguin Cafe Parade is still my favorite song featuring Saki, but I also liked Favorite ni Odorasete. To be honest I really like Asselin's voice the most from that group lol.

I haven't heard of Band Yarouze but from a brief glance it seems like the game is shutting down?

As for character designs, that's a pretty complex question to me. I mean, the character sheet I'm working on right now for example, I mostly did it just as practice to learn more about military tactical equipment, so most of my time has actually been spent researching specific components and how everything comes together. The character themselves are more of an afterthought, but I hope that the next character I work on I can do so without having to stop and spend so much time looking up model numbers and the like.

For this one character sheet more of my time has actually been spent researching specific details to make sure I understand things properly, so that I'm not just drawing random/incorrect equipment. I'd also say that's the more taxing aspect of it, similar to how when one begins learning art they must study how form/colours/light etc work together. It's always worth it though, as once you've done enough studies you'll have developed a fairly solid foundation of knowledge from which to draw from when you want to just scribble from your mind.

I think with a lot of things, it's really obvious if the designer doesn't actually understand the function of certain things. Not only is it noticable to anybody who's even vaguely familiar with the subject (be that guns, fashion or any particular niche etc) but it's also crippling to the designer, as they are working more or less on pure instinct, rather than actual knowledge. I'm not saying the two are mutually exclusive, but instinct honed from proper knowledge means much more than just going on your gut when you don't understand the topic well enough.

I get the feeling I'm not really explaining this well because it's late, but I do feel the most difficult aspect of designing a character is truly understanding the intent and purpose of said character. It doesn't help that you can entirely overthink this, and many of the best/most memorable designs are strikingly simple in nature. Understanding that balance of how far to take the design is crucial. Simple is good, but a lot of times the difference between simple and plain is razor thin.

As for the best/most fun part? For me it's actually the part that comes after the designing. Seeing the design come to life (be that in a video game or story) has been the most satisfying aspect to me. Don't get me wrong, designing a character itself is fun too, but seeing it put into something is the greater reward to me.

But, if the question was more specifically what part of the process of designing a character is the most fun, I'd have to say it's the initial stage where you create a rough concept, because the idea hasn't truly taken form yet, so you get to explore a lot of options and that's quite an enjoyable thing to do.

Anyway, I'm sort of rambling here. It's an interesting topic and one that I feel deserves a better write-up than what I've done here so maybe I'll try explain my perspective a bit more in-depth in future.