As this is based upon my own experiences with my horse I decided to use the basic appearance of my horse as a template for the character design just making a slight change to the markings to make them simpler so they can remain more consistent.
Also decided on a name - Arrow which was one of the choices to call my horse due to his marking (exaggerated the characters marking into a arrow shape after that was decided) but in the end my horse got called Treacle because that made a big impact on what tamed him. but for this story he is going to be called Arrow (starting off named eddie though)
decided to try changing the tail colour from white to chestnut as I thought he might look better with a darker colour tail.
looking at different hair style to see what would suit the characters personality more
character design for the people taking part in the taming - tried a few different styles and clothes but I went with a long hair design for the daughter and short for the mother - need to practise people more partially from the waist down
Main Character name Willow - young teen (daughter)
Main character name - Philippa (meaning horse lover) Adult (mother)
and another random character I designed while on the bus in case I decide to include the horse dealer or need another person, but they jumped into my head so I drew them. but these got scraped from the story soon after.
I did an aerial view of the small holding the characters live at so it can remain the same thtough out
 |
I decided to do a character sketch inclueding all the main characters using the colours/ style that I might use for the actual story
|
in changing my story to have more character story line so its not just about the horse I needed to add in another character to be willows friend. this character should look different that the other characters especially willow to give more variety in the people.
I decided that this character should have short light coloured hair opposite to that of willow and to make it even more different I looked into different face shapes as I tend to always draw people in the same basic shape.
I decided to go with the short bob cut with one side tucked behind the ear as it appealed to me more and goes well with the round face shape that I drew with it make a completely different look to that of willow and makes it seem like a happy cheerful type of person which is what i was aiming for.
tried some different gestures for this character trying to show the personality with these gestures which might be used within the story.
a sheet to remind me what the characters hair styles should be so i don't change it by accident while drawing the story hence keeping it consistent
another sheet to help with consistence of all the characters standing next to each other and what their heights should be.
at first i named this character faith but changed it after to Abigail. although i liked the name faith i thought that perhaps it was a bit to giving away the story sort and isn't really a name although in America you seem to be able to use anything as a name but i thought a standard name like Abigail would be nice.
some colour experiments for Abigail for her cheerful personality i thought bright colours would be good and tried a red top and a purple top but as soon as i saw the red top i thought that would work really well. then i tried different light hair colours but that wasn't going to well but the first one being a blond ish colour would work well if refined a bit.
i then spent a while thinking a colour for the trousers but could only think of grey, black or blue. blue works really well but all the characters have a shade of blue trousers so far so thought i needed a change of colour and the grey don't go with the red really and would probably mix in with the backgrounds as well.
i sketched a panel from the story and started to coloured it in with the chosen colours then came to the trousers but did think the white would go really well with the red/pink so might give that a go
