WIP - Rinko - Character design process

For this WIP I wanted to talk about the character design process. A lot goes into it, so I'll start with the first step.

Inspiration

This character is primarily inspired by Rinko Minami from the game "My Own School Infirmary" by ALICESOFT. Here's her Anime Character Database profile. Hopefully it's okay to share this kind of thing. https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/characters.php?id=19170

In Waifu Wonderland, Rinko is going to be a teacher at the school. You'll be able to find her in the faculty offices. Up until now, the majority of the women in WW have been more of the MILF type. Since the first area is just a suburban neighborhood, having a lot of MILF characters made sense, but I want to make sure there's a wide variety of types in the game. So for this one, I want to go for a skinnier type. So I used Bayonetta as a secondary inspiration. I'll probably end up using her for the scene reference.

Personality

So now that I have the inspiration, I've got to think about character personality. Most of this isn't explained in game or anything, but it always influences how I make the characters look. Rinko is a somewhat young teacher, but was always at the top of her class. She's very smart and she knows it, so she has a lot of confidence. She takes a lot of pride in her appearance as well, as she's learned that she can use it to get what she wants when all else fails. So she keeps herself tight and well groomed.

References

Once I get the inspiration and a basic personality, I generally have a good idea of what I want to do with the character. So then I go out and find any references I think I'll need. In my head, she's got long dark hair and is wearing a suit, but in a bit of a provocative way. So a somewhat short skirt and lots of cleavage. She's got a lot of confidence to a pose with her hands on her hips is always a solid choice. I've already drawn most of these things before, so I didn't need too many specific references this time. But I still wanted to look up some poses. And these are a couple I found, and I'll explain why I considered them.

First is a more dynamic pose. I like this pose and it would make for a fun and interesting piece, but usually, character artwork should be a little more subdued. It's usually used a lot and having it too dynamic can make things a little distracting. This pose also has a bit too much attitude. Rinko is confident, but this is a bit much.

Next was this one. Woman in a suit with her hands on her hips, exactly what I was looking for. Technically, yes, but there's a lot of problems with this reference. For one, the suit looks big and is completely covering her body. It's also a very normal standing pose. Being an adult game, I always make sure the characters are at least a little over sexualized. So a reference with baggy clothes in a fairly normal and professional looking stance doesn't work very well. I might be able to use the hands as reference though, so I still kept it.

So I kept looking and found this one. It's pretty solid. It's dynamic without being too crazy, and while she doesn't have a suit or anything, her clothes are tight enough that it wouldn't be too hard to get the basic form. But she only has one hand on her hips, and for me, it just doesn't "feel" like Rinko. To me, Rinko feels a little classier. And this feels more tomboyish. I still held onto it just in case I wanted to pull something from it though.

I went through a few more, but then ultimately landed on this as the main reference. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it's pretty rare for one to be exact. This is definitely in the "close enough" category. Since it's got both hands on the hips and it's dynamic enough to be interesting without being distracting.

Sketches

I've now got my inspiration, character personality, idea, and some references. Now for the last part of the pre-production character design part, sketches. Also sometimes called thumbnails. This step is basically just doing a series of quick sketches on a small scale to test out ideas. Usually you want to do at least 3. Since I'm having to create characters fairly quickly, I usually just do thumbnails until I find one I think fits. Sometimes that can take a while, sometimes it's very quick. I always try to at least do 3 anyway though, since even if I really like the first one, sometimes one of the other two look better.

For this one, I did the 3 and liked this one the most.

I combined elements from the reference that I liked, with the hands somewhat high on the hips and the hips curved to the side a bit. I gave her a sort of hime cut like her main inspiration, but modified a bit. It wont be perfectly straight in the actual artwork though, I'll add some pointy hairs. Mainly because I just don't like that perfectly straight line style and don't think it works in the WW style. It just looks really unnatural and flat. For the base pose I brought her legs together, because she's wearing a skirt and because I made her stand up a little bit straighter to inject the Bayonetta inspiration. As well as made her somewhat skinny with a slightly longer neck. Then from there, instead of an undershirt I give her an under bra. To lean into her using her sexuality. That's also why she's got a pretty short skirt compared to her inspiration. I also didn't include the ascot, because my Rinko wouldn't wear something like that. Then I gave her a confident smile and confident eyes. Normally I try to avoid the looking straight at the camera head, but I realized I haven't really done that much in WW. Really just with Angela, and even then I gave her a slight tilt. So in the interest of variety, and because it would fit well with the character, I let her look straight at the camera.

And the base design is complete.

Mostly anyway.

Starting the actual artwork

Now that all of the pre-production work is over, it's finally time to start on the actual artwork. From here, I use the thumbnail as a base and a starting point. However, when going from thumbnail to full artwork, things usually change a bit too. Since something that seems like a good idea, may look odd when fleshed out. I've periodically been taking WIP snapshots as I work to show you what I mean.

Here's the first one. Pretty much just a more detailed version of the sketch. It looked fine so far, so I kept working.

But after a while, the hair didn't look quite right. The bang on the left looked a bit out of place. I put that in to give more homage to the original inspiration by preserving a little bit more of her original hairstyle, but it just kind of clashed with everything else.

From there, it didn't look quite balanced, and I also realized that I use the hair behind the one ear thing a lot, so I decided to cover it up and let her hair fall and frame her face instead. Since the hair wasn't combed behind her ear anymore, I had to make the hair falling on her shoulder a bit longer. I also decided to remove the hair strand going off to the right. Usually I include stuff like that because it makes the hair feel more natural. But it didn't quite fit with her personality. I see her as the type who wouldn't want her hair to be "messy", so I made it so that her hair is mostly flat.

And here's where it landed. The hair coming directly from the scalp straight down was really weird and unnatural, so I added some bangs on that side and then better shaped the hair on her shoulders. It still needs a bit of work, but it looks much better now.

From there I just kept working. I added in the lace details on the bra (which was a nightmare, never again lol), and to do that I had to go find another reference. Since I had never done lace before, and it didn't look right at all when I tried to do it how I thought it was supposed to look. Which always means reference hunting time. This is the reference I ended up using, because it was one of the simpler ones that fit the basic shape I wanted. It's simplified of course, but hopefully you can see what elements I pulled from it. I also had to make some minor adjustments to the anatomy. The breasts especially were weirdly shaped, so I went in and fixed them. For the most part, the design was kept from here on though.

After the sketch was done I added in the flat colors. I always always always save the eye and lip coloring/rendering for last. Once that part is done, my stupid brain is always like, "GG" and decides it's done. So I put it off until the very end.

These colors are what I'm thinking now, and they seem to be working, but they can still be adjusted in the rendering process. Adding in shadows and highlights can sometimes make a color look drastically different. When that happens I'll adjust the color using the hue/saturation and brightness/contrast tools once it's done. Some artists like to work in greyscale and then use gradient maps to add the color, but I just don't like that process. It generally takes me longer and it's kind of annoying to do imo. I like working directly with the color. It's easier to see how things are blending together and how it's affecting the piece. Since color is extremely complex and even if you do work in greyscale, the results can still be different depending on the colors used. Nothing wrong with using gradient maps, it's just not what I do.

During the flat coloring process I decided to try and give her some pantyhose. I thought it fit and right now I like how it looks. I'll test it with and without the pantyhose at the end and see which version I like better. I was going to do lace stockings instead to match the bra, but just doing the bra took me so long. Since I'd never done lace before I didn't realize just how complicated it actually is. And I didn't want to do that again lol. I am able to spend a lot more time on artwork now that I'm done with school and am unemployed, but I do want there to be a limit still. On top of that, if I did the lace stockings, I would have to do them again in the scene. Even if she completely strips otherwise, it wouldn't make sense for her to take off the stockings. And having to do them bigger and in more detail would be a nightmare. Especially since the rendering process on them may take some extra time. I'm not really sure if I'll need to put some extra detail into the design when rendering or if it'll look okay with normal rendering.

Rinko is the first character that you'll need the apartment to talk to, and I haven't fully decided how to do her scene yet. Since you need the apartment, it makes sense that you'd take her back to your place, but at the same time, I like the idea of ripping a hole in her pantyhose and doing her right there in the office. We'll see what happens though. For fully clothed scenes, I need a really good ref. So it just depends on if I can find a good one or not.

Longer and shorter than you thought

And that's basically the character design process. I imagine it's probably more steps than you thought it would be. It's definitely a lot more involved than I thought it was before taking concept art classes. I thought it was just... draw the character lol.

The last part is doing the rendering. It's always impossible for me to really know what something is going to look like until I actually see it, so I continually make adjustments as needed throughout the entire process. Some characters or scenes need longer than others though. Up until now, I've been pretty short on time and haven't always been able to make all the adjustments I would have liked. I had a very specific amount of time to work and had to stay on schedule to get the game out. But right now, I've got significantly more time, and I've been able to really take my time. Which has been nice, and I think it's led to some higher quality work. But that's also one of the reasons some older characters and scenes look a little rougher than others. They needed more time, but I just couldn't keep working on them. Eventually I'll go back and fix the worst ones, but for now, I'm more focused on filling out the game so it's not quite so bare.

I know this may seem like a lot more than you were expecting, but this whole process only took me about 5 hours. About half an hour for the inspiration and collecting references, about half an hour for the sketches, then about 3 hours for the sketch (with about an hour of that just doing the bra), and then about an hour for the colors. Then rendering should take another 2 hours or so. For about 7 hours total. About a day's worth of work.

Starting out, this process is significantly longer though. I really only needed some rough pose references, and then I had to find some lace references later. But that's just because I have a lot of experience already. I already know how to do hair, how basic folds in clothes work, and how to do a suit. I even had a good idea how to do the pose already, and just got ref for the smaller details. If I didn't know how to draw those things yet, I would've had to find more references, more exact references, and then probably do a lot of erasing and retrying to get things right. Because whenever you have to draw something new, it always takes a lot longer. Once you've done something a couple of times, it starts to get ingrained into your brain and you can more easily do it again. One of my professors used to call this "building your database."

For context, when I first started working on my art degree about 3 years ago, this whole process would take me a good 20-40+ hours. When I had to work physically, with actual paper and pencils and everything, stuff would take more than 100. I had to slowly work my way through everything. It was rough, but now I can do it significantly faster.

That's mainly to say that if you're an artist and you're trying to get better, it's a process. It takes a lot of time and experience to get better and faster. Don't be discouraged if you aren't super fast and good yet, you'll get there!

Anyway, that's all for this WIP. I hope it was helpful. Or at the very least, I hope you enjoyed the preview of Rinko. Her full artwork will be out on Wednesday.