Character Design

Explain who your character is and how they play into the story.

My character's name is Hakko, and he is Kubo's older brother. Hakko is about 25 years old, and he has been living on his own since Kubo was born. Because of this, he has become very hard, aggressive, and serious. He has also had learned to fight to survive. He is a skilled swordsman, and you can tell that he has been in a few fights by the scar across his face. He is usually very reserved, but wears a golden belt to show people that he is the real deal. Hakko is a very powerful character and strangers usually leave him alone.

Explain your process to make this character.

The first thing I did was create a notepad document to brainstorm characteristics and attributes of my character. Then I opened a new Photoshop document and began sketching head ideas. I combined the elements I liked into a final rough sketch and moved on to the clothing. I didn't spend much time on this because I already knew what type of clothing I wanted, so I made a couple of rough sketches and moved on to the final.

To draw my final picture I started with a stick figure to figure out proportions. Then I filled out the arms, legs, and body to the correct width. Then I made a new layer which included the major outlines of the character. This part took the longest, but when I was finished, I added a layer of shading, which was black and white on very low opacity, and finally, a layer of color. The color layer was fairly simple because I didn't have to worry about value, the shading layer added that all for me.

What things do you find successful and what might you change for next time?

I thought that the process for shading the piece was successful as it allowed me to overlay the shading layer and edit it separately all the way through the piece as I felt necessary, and I also was able to turn the layer off to help with coloring the piece. Something I didn't like was the lines of this piece. I felt that they looked a little jagged and pixelated. If I did this again I would start with a higher resolution canvas.