Within 'Sour Punch' there are three main characters; Zest, Tang and Citrus. As the whole idea is fruit vs Veg, I knew I wanted all the civilians you would see in the background to resemble other fruit and be easily recognisable as what fruit they are. In order to do this in a more easy and organised way, I wrote out all the different fruit I wanted to design characters around and split them evenly between feminine and masculine leaning designs. As they wouldn’t be receiving voice lines and would be only in for a short amount of time, I needed the character designs to be simple and fit into the art style and world of the game.
To do this, I picked out some different fruit and decided to base their designs around people I know in order to get more fun and real designs. For example, I used my friends Hayleigh and Emily as inspiration for the Strawberry and Mango respectively. Here you can see the sketches of the designs, the hair being what mainly mimicked the shape or aesthetic of their fruit inspiration and keeping the clothing simple as with the rest of the characters in-game. These were just the initial sketches, however, letting me get a basic idea on the overall style of these characters and seeing what did or didn't work for them. After re-thinking the designs, I changed some elements before giving them final designs.
Here is the finalised design for the strawberry inspired character, colours included. It uses the same art style shown in the rest of my work for this project: simple and cute. Instead of just giving the character a stem coming from her head, instead I decided to give her a beret to emphasize the overall 'cute' and 'sweet' aesthetic I was going for with her character as Strawberries are one of the sweetest fruits.
As the main characters of my game have limited colour pallets, I wanted to have background characters have small accents of green to help with selling their signature fruit if needed which I used here within the top of the beret that mirrored a strawberries stem and the same mirrored in the small tie of strawberries shirt. I feel as though this design helped to finalise the look I was after in the best way possible as it sweet, cute and interesting at the same time.
Here is the finalised design for the Mango inspired character with colours included. This design was more difficult as I found it hard to mimic a mangos unique shape within a hairstyle or part of a costume. Instead, I used the overall style of a mango, being round and smooth, to make the hair have a more unique texture to any others within the world whist still having the same art style. Another way in which I ensured that I had the look of a mango was by including a mango leaf as a part of the hairstyle which almost mimics a feather in someone’s hair.
Her colour pallet was hard to nail down as I wanted it to be bright and colourful whilst also only having limited colours. To do this I limited the colours to red, orange and green of different shades with a little of white as an accent colour to pop against the bright colours. I chose more bright, saturated colours as Mangos always remind me of summer and exotic, sunny places.
Not mentioned previously was that I had intended to design many background characters of different aesthetics. As there would be no voice acting, I wanted to make sure that I achieved my desired look of the characters without the need for a voice. To do this, I made sure to use different inspirations from the fruits and people around me. This character design was mainly inspired by the fruit and pun name I created of 'Adam Snapple' which was a altered way of putting Adams apple, a traditionally masculine trait.
This design is for a male apple character who is a little shy but still loving. As I wanted diversity within the background characters, I gave him darker skin to contrast the white accents along with complimenting the deep shades making the colours of his hair. As I find male designs harder to create, I thought starting with a more feminine design would help me ease into it, using the more stereotypically feminine colours for his design giving him a more androgynous design.
The final character design I created within this session was a dragon fruit inspired character. I knew that this would be a less simple design as an actual dragon fruit has so many elements that make it unique. I was inspired by my friend Romy for the design of this Dragon Fruit character. I used the outside skin of the fruit as design for her hair, being a hot pink with green tips, whilst I used the inside of the fruit as inspiration for her skin as I wanted to find an interesting way to mimic her freckles by using the black seeds within the fruit.
Using a dragon fruit meant I had a lot of fun with the style of the character, wanting to give her a darker, more edgy design which was shown within the clothing choices mirroring a classic gothic use of fishnet against dark colours or pure skin. This also helps to mimic the interior of a dragon fruit with the harsh black seeds that contrast with the white pulp.
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