The Challenge I Didn't Expect: Unique Designs in Identical Characters! - "Twins" Video + PSD

Hey everyone,

Some thoughts about the process behind "Twins".

Concept

The inspiration behind this concept was an old idea about "the two brothers": the 'bad' and the 'good' one. While "bad" and "good" might be simplistic descriptions, you get the point. One often gets into trouble, and the other doesn't for different reasons. This is an idea about opposites, visually speaking, and that's why I chose those two owls as references, even with the same gesture but with different values and colors. There is no particular reason for owls; I saved those two references a long time ago and thought it would be nice to use them for this idea.

I was not sure how to show this "opposite brothers" idea with a story, so I thought it would be interesting to portray a very relatable situation among brothers, which is "competition". That's where the "playing video game" idea came up. This way, I could reflect their intention and capture the different attitudes they have when addressing a challenge.

Execution

I needed to make them similar but different at the same time; the references made that clear in the first place, I just did not know what to make different and similar in the composition. Different because they reflect different personalities, the same because they were twins. The way I balanced this was by choosing a similar body gesture for both (in reflection of the owl's reference) but different facial expressions. Why? I've been approaching gestures inspired by the references for a while, and also I think you can tell a lot about a character just by their facial expressions.

Both were playing; I chose to primarily represent the nature of the "bad" brother by pushing a gesture shape where he tried to sabotage the other brother with his left arm. After both shapes were done, I reinforced the questionable nature of the brother by drawing a very angry face, like a symbol of a bad loser, but eventually, I changed it to him celebrating before finishing the match. The other brother shared the same gesture, but he is flinching from his brother's sabotage; his facial expression shows he is focused and not disturbed.

Aside from the action both were taking during this small moment, I struggled for a while trying to come up with another way to make it clear they were opposite sides of the same coin. As you can see in the process video, I've tried pushing different outfits for each, but completely different outfits were risky as the only point of reference to suggest this twins dynamic relied entirely on the anatomy; it was not strong enough for me. So I thought about doing the opposite, instead of different outfits, they would dress the same with small opposite costume choices.

The basketball uniform was perfect, in my opinion, as it brings value to the idea of "competition" and by choosing the same costume patterns and colors, the "twins" concept became clear enough, or at least it had the validation I was looking for since the beginning of the process. Finally, I chose to change secondary small points of information as representatives of the "opposites" concept. 

Conclusion

My confusion at first was because I was trying to give the same weight to two goals "twins" and "opposites". Throughout the process, I understood one of them needed to dominate the composition with bigger shapes, one color/values composition for both, and the other goal, which was "opposites," to act as a secondary point, behind shape details and color/value contrasts. But why not the other way around? If I made them primarily different with big shapes, colors, and values, the twin idea would be very difficult to assume at first sight; that was the conclusion.

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