Initial sketches - Daughter

 For my fifth character, I decided to once again do my little sketches exercise. I set a timer and decided to create 5 different sketches of a teenage daughter that would be a rebel and a feminist activist. I had a few different ideas, therefore I decided to draw it all out to give myself options and see what I can do with it. I also decided to stick to only two types of eyes, circular, like the ones I decided to give the mom or the arch ones that I will give the dad. After finishing my previous research, I noticed my characters need to look like a family so I decided that eyes can be something that children take from their parents. 

For the first sketch I decided to give my character the arch like eyes and a 'feminist' hoodie. I like the face shape, but I really do not like the hair. They seem to take all my attention from the character. I generally think the hair should be either shorter or tied. I think here the hair is too messy and as I mentioned, all my attention goes to the hair. It looks really heavy and as much as I mentioned that color purple makes me think of the sensation of having trouble breathing, I doubt that the hair would be appealing in this case. I feel like this character needs to create an atmosphere of confidence. I need to create a character that would radiate the confidence that the viewer would actually feel it. 

This next sketch is definitely confident and the hair is less messy. I like that she is wearing a headpiece and has bangs, that makes her look like a teenager, not a kid. In this sketch I gave the character the arch like eyes and freckles. The mom will have freckles, therefore I think adding both is a good idea. What I really do not like about this sketch is the body. It looks like a man's body or a child's body. I forgot that a teenage girl has already different shapes and it is important to include those in the design to make the character more real and relatable. This is just not how a teenage girl looks like and I do not want my cartoon to lie to kids that the body just stays this way. I dressed this character in a jersey to make her sporty. I like the outfit, but I am not sure if this design screams 'feminist' to me. 

This next sketch is definitely breaking stereotypes. It is a princess who has short hair and does not dress in dresses and cute, pink outfits. I gave her mom like eyes and a mom nose to show that they are related. I also cut her eyebrow to represent how trendy she is. I am not sure if this character is confident enough, but if she is not, maybe that is only the problem of the pose. I think that maybe if I make her stand in a more arched back position, she would look a lot more confident. I have also added a crown in this sketch to remind myself that all of those designs would have a crown since she is a princess. I generally like this design. It could possibly be the one if I made some alternations to it. 

This next character feels very confident and I personally love the hair. Once again the nose and the eyes are the same as I will give to the mom. She looks like an older teenager and by that I mean like a seventeen or eighteen year old, which is not bad, I definitely want this character to be relatable for older viewers and not like a crazy older sister like Candace from 'Phineas and Ferb', I want to make her smart and using her voice. I really like this one, but I think if I was going to choose her as my main base for this character, I would need to change the body a little bit. 

This last sketch is a lot different than the rest. This character looks a lot less confident for me, so that is not good. She remind me a lot of myself and I do not know if that is the right thing in this case. I like her facial features and the hair, but I don't know if 'liking' is enough if I do not think the character gives out the idea I want her to represent. I generally see this design as a very sweet and innocent one and I am definitely not sure about it. 

After finishing this task I can see there are many ideas I have and that is great, but all those ideas need a couple changes to become my final piece. I am glad I know what I am looking for and those designs look great to me. The are all good starts to creating this particular character.