The Design Evolution of Nigel

Writing this description I realized that I want to talk not only about Nigel's design evolution, but about mine too, as an artist. Because a lot of my characters have been with me for a long time, and they grew up with me. So Nigel isn't just important to me because of nostalgic reasons.

Nigel is especially important to me, because I always felt a bound with him. That's because on one hand I came up with his race completely myself. On the other hand, because I always wanted him to be a kind of an exiled character, who is trying to find his place in the world, and has a hard time making friends. At first I intended his inner conflicts to come from his heritage, because he was some kind of half-blood creature, and considered himself a mongrel. And he didn't even have any kind of special powers or abilities, and that's pretty sad if you are surrounded by many magical creatures, who can do all kinds of amazing things :D But this changed during his creation process.

In 2013, when I was only a kid, I adored Digimons and Pokemons, so I drew many characters who looked a lot like them. I even wanted to create Nigel's proportions similar to theirs.

In 2014 my taste regarding character designs and proportions finally started to develop a bit. I tried to come up with less „plastic” or „alien” kind of designs. I started to practice more simple, fantasy-like designs. But even then I wanted to make Nigel as some weird, mixed creature. I wanted him to be part dragon, and at one point he even learned to breathe fire.

When in 2016 I came up with a new design for him, it was an interesting period for me. I started to realize what style and logic I want to create my characters with. I felt I was overthinking all of my characters until that point. „Sometimes less is more” as they say, and I try to design according to that even today. Shapes and ideas started to interest me a lot more than details. After I simplified Nigel's design - and I liked it a lot -, I wasn't sure anymore if I wanted him to be some kind of „mongrel” character anymore. The Tree of Life universe will have a ton of weird looking characters anyway, so he wouldn't really stand out.

In 2019, after ignoring Nigel for years, I started to work on his design again. After the Tree of Life story went through multiple changes, and re-writes from the ground up, I felt I had to re-think some of the character's designs too. I still wanted to keep Nigel's design as some kind of mixed race, but without putting too much pointless details into it. He even got some clothes, just like the other Tree of Life characters, because before this point none of them wore any. And clothes can give a lot to a character's personality. And I realized it would look pretty dumb if the characters would fight completely naked, with their non existing genitals and nipples. For me it felt like I couldn't decide if I wanted to make something erotic or not. If a character doesn't wear clothes, it should come from a tradition or cultural reason, not because I'm too lazy to draw clothes, and I'd rather use my eraser to get rid of some NSFW body parts, to save time… XP

I'm still proud of Nigel's final design even today, and I hope you like him too :)