Practice characters

I wanted to make sure I got the style down right, so I decided to make multiple practice runs, using as many references as I can in order to get a good grip on how the style looks and how to go about working on it.

The first I did was Lucy Steel, I started by copying how Trish looks as they are both 15 year old girls and so would have similar body types, I needed to re-look at how the eyes and nose are drawn, as well as improving the overall anatomy of the piece to fit more with the exaggeration of Jojo's. I also needed to pick some more saturated colours, as she looks washed out in comparison to Trish.

After the problems I had with Lucy I went back and made rough studies of the shape language that the characters are built on, realising that the styles are distinct between parts, but all characters from part 4 onwards are much more rounded in their designs, meaning I need to focus on keeping the shapes slightly more on that side, even for the male characters. This is just one of the sketch sheets I had made while working on these designs.

After this I made Blackmore, I think this came out much better. The anatomy is more on model and the shading came out a lot better. At this point I started to experiment with overlays, finding one that added the grainy texture of the original art. The one complaint I have about this one is that I struggled to know if I should have made the texture of the coat look realistic or have it match the shading of the rest of the fabric. In the end I went for the latter as it matched what was drawn in the manga.

After I had worked on these two I started to work on what I thought would be my final 2 characters.