Grace McGann's Portfolio - Digital Art/Character Design

Digital Art and Character Design

Here are a few of the characters I've designed over the past few years. I really love the process of crafting how a character looks based on their background, personality, and story.

Primary Character Designs

(1) Early concepting, mood board, basic silhouettes, design guide + rules

(2) Initial designs and style testing with early game and character concepts

(3) Testing out a different body type with new outfits

(4) Narrowing down body type with different charactertizations of Aletha

(5) Narrowing down skin tone/hair color combos with glove/gauntlet design

(6) Honing in style and more grand outfits for an art show

(7) Final Design Outfit Experimenting

(8) Color Experimenting with Final Design

(9) Final Official Design with Color-Switching Powers

The Aletha Character Design Process

Since I've never done a character design with this much iteration and concept work, I thought I would talk about my thoughts and process for designing the main character in my capstone group's year-and-a-half-long game project.

Originally, our game was about a reporter who was going to be a muckraker (or we called it a coloraker) exposing corrupt corporations hoarding color from the public and claiming it was in short supply because seeing color wasn't a natural occurrence in this universe. That's where my designs originally started(2, 3). I wanted the design to come off as a reporter who's quick on their feet, hiding behind walls and in the rafters to get the best dirt on whoever she was trying to take down—a journalist mixed with an adventurer.

We ended up moving away from that idea and towards a game where you would play as someone who uses shields to attack and defend in a stationary position switching colors on each hand based on the enemy. The story was still very up in the air at this point, so I did some silhouette work to see what kind of shields our team wanted Aletha to have. Would they float around her? Lock into each other? How could she attack with her shields? (1)

When we finally figured out what our story was going to be, I immediately made a mood board and after deciding with the rest of the team which silhouette we liked, I did more design concepts. (4)

The story would have Aletha being invited to her old intern's gallery opening and upon arriving, discovering he's kidnapping all the artists he invited. With them, he would be able to train the AI system he made and become the "greatest artist in the world." In our universe, artists were celebrities and seen as the top 1%, getting riches and fame to help develop society and bring joy and color to people who don't have the same skills as they do.

With that in mind, I wanted to figure out what she was going to wear to this fake art gallery opening - being a fancy event but also having to jump into action at a moment's notice(6). At this point, I made a list of "rules" I had to follow for the design to fit Aletha as a character and how I felt it would be communicated in the best way. (1)

I had a lot of fun coming up with these new outfits and really felt like I was reaching a breakthrough with my designs in (6). What at the time were just sketches during my capstone class, ended up being the inspiration I needed to land on a final design.

With a classy, futuristic yet athletic/active-wear style mixed with something a high-class artist with humble beginnings in this universe might wear, I found my mojo with the sketches in (7) and used the one my team liked the most to touch up and finish the design. After a few color passes(8), I found one that fit just right with Aletha. It gave her a bright and warm vibe to push her soft yet bold personality, creative and colorful nature, and desire to help others.

With her character being an artist first and a hero spontaneously, there had to be a reason why she had a tool that could be used for fighting AI monsters. Her gloves work as an artist multitool, channeling pure color into different forms(solid, liquid, gas). Originally she used it as a paintbrush without a canvas(like those 3D paintbrushes), or would shape tools for stone carving out of the color substance, among other things. She could make any tool she needed for different art mediums with this one invention, and so conveniently at that. The orbs on her belt store the pure color substance so she'll always have a supply on hand while keeping it safe(9).