Something outside of my main sketchbook is the other design ideas I played with for the main cast of character. The idea was to create a set of characters who were linked by their uniqueness and classic fantasy dissimilarity such as the fellowship of the ring, the main cast of Star Wars, and the avengers to name a few. This ‘cluster of misfits’ is also the basis of most DND groups, and for many realistic reasons. For example, a good team often covers each other’s shortcomings, leading to a group that has very different specialisms- something that is then echoed in their appearance or in this case their design. It also gives an implication of scale to the world to have great minds coming not just from humans but from the many races that have had chance to emerge from the complexity of the environments. It gives the world a sense of mysticism to have characters that wouldn’t fall into our world at all, as well as giving clear reasons for their dissimilarity and therefore their better abilities. Having non-human, or humans drastically different from reality also allows a wider range of people to connect with the media in question- broadening the target audience of the creation if you want to be cold-eyed and capitalist about it, and inspiring more minds irrespective of their identity to put it more nicely. As well as this it means I get to draw and design more, and more interesting or wacky designs! Therefore there are some designs that didn’t make it- ranging on a large base of influence.
The final cast were designed largely on a shape design and association front, this meant they fit well together visually from the outset without being too similar, something widely looked for in animation and younger reading, comics, advertising, branding etc. and it is widely cited that our favourite designs have an iconic silhouette. To develop them further I can try adapting them to different purposes, but I wanted the base silhouette to be recognisable especially. This also gives each character “main character energy”, something important for the tone of book I was envisioning, as Bard compares himself to his companions and finds himself lacking in all of their strengths not able to see what new he brings to the team. Where most main characters stand out in their design from the others in their world Bard does not, despite being so kitted out in powerful gear. I found this interesting in dnd groups- especially with the design of Vox Machina in The Legend of Vox Machina (Fig. 1), since each character is the favourite of the person playing them, each is as cool as the person can make them, there are no ‘supporting roles’ etc, each character changes role depending on who’s story takes the limelight. I thought this was a very interesting premise for a book, and a book series, and also fits with the themes of insecurity and subsequent burn out, over-competitivity, and isolation I was interested in portraying to some level.

I used collage to inspire the chunky design of Bard, intending to use chunks of paper to depict his trousers in the book. Wether this will now make the final edit is not decided.