Geckos Series Process + File! 🦎 The Value Of Rare Characters

In the previous post, I shared the overall process structure of this portrait series "geckos," yet there are a few things I felt differently about personally.

For a start, I noticed how after stressing over the first character sketch, my subsequent character sketches developed quicker and felt much better. I think this was because the first character (black gecko) was supposed to be the first image people would see on the Instagram post, therefore, it was supposed to be the best out of the four. But because I did not use any reference, I had no bar previously set to feel satisfied when comparing. For instance, if I'm designing a character and using a reference for the pose and the clothes, the bar is how my sketch looks in relation to the reference. They don't need to be an exact copy, but there is a way to feel some kind of accomplishment when they share similarities.

Having high expectations and no clear bar set put me in a very demanding position, drawing/painting until something clicked. But when you don't know what is supposed to click, you can spend quite a lot of time trying to meet those expectations.

Another thing I tried was to make an "odd" character, the blue/grey gecko. I've done "funny" characters in the past, but most of my characters are supposed to be attractive. This one, in order to be loyal to the reference, was supposed to look a bit strange. I think that was my favorite because it really added some contrast to the group. It actually feels like they are part of a world, a team sharing something in common. If you ask me how to do that, I'd suggest making your character attractive yet changing one aspect of its physique to break the "perfect" look so common in character design.

I hope my experience helps you in some way in case you are struggling with the same.

Process Video: https://youtu.be/Xqxmf6fuuF0

Thank you so much for your support!