The Adventures of Wolf and Hood: Character Design For Hood
In this post I’m going to talk about the early stages designing one of the characters for an Illustration project I’m working on for Stone Baked Games. I’m writing a series of short articles describing the art development for the project.
Hood is based upon Red Riding Hood but she has a few differences in this story.
My initial sketches were quick and loose so that I could try different ideas without getting bogged down with accuracy and details. I was thinking about shape language and attitude of the character. I decided to set the characters in a fantasy medieval world so I studied medieval clothing. I also studied photo reference for poses that conveyed similar attitudes the characters might express in the story. I went in a more stylised direction for the art but using reference is very important to understand how clothing and anatomy works.
Medieval clothing studies 
Early sketches for Wolf and Hood 
Attitude Pose Study 
Attitude Pose Study
Deciding to go in a more stylised cartoony direction I developed these sketches:
Short Hood Shape Test 
Longer Hood Shape Test 
Sketching ideas for details and Hoods 
Style Tests and development for Hood
I tried some different hairstyles and Hood shapes. I wanted her to look a bit edgy, youthful and friendly. Working out how character could move around in the Hood was interesting. I decided on arm holes for the Hood so that drawing her in action poses would be easier because she has a few toward the end of the story.
This is the final design for Hood. I made turn-around drawings for her so that I would have reference for drawing her in different angles in different scenes of the story.