“Backjump” Character Development
A supervillain character design based on randomized powers.
Initial Design Concepts
The main problem to solve in this character design was how to make two randomly assigned superpowers (wall-crawling and bringing drawings to life) work together. These sketches are initial concepts playing with four different ways to execute the prompt.
The concepts that were deemed the most promising were concept 1 and concept 2. Concept 1 is a graffiti artist character who climbs walls to bring their tags to life. Concept 2 is a living rubberhose cartoon character who can run up walls using cartoon physics and use their pen to bring other cartoons to life.
Character Design Development
Further exploration on the two most promising concepts. The rubberhose cartoon character was ultimately scrapped in favor of the more complex and visually interesting graffiti artist. Pictured is the process of staging the graffiti villain, who has been named Backjump. Their outfit has been refined and the design now includes an arm made of ink similar to the above initial concept 3, which is what allows them to wall-crawl.
Final Character Illustration
Finalized illustrations of the character set in a scene, designed with a comic book cover layout in mind. Space was left around the character to allow for easy text placement. The first image shows the illustration without any text or final effects and overlays. The second showcases the illustration as presented in Cal Poly Pomona’s 2D3D juried art show as a fully formatted comic book cover, complete with logo and paper effects.