Palace for Life: Character Designs
Charlotte Cottrell iHASCO
The Brief:
“
As part of Team Mates, a mental health and well-being intervention programme which helps develop emotional resilience and confidence in Primary School children, we are developing a new set of resources. This will be a collection of different worksheets in a colourful, child friendly booklet that covers the various themes we work through as part of the programme. We would like to develop six characters that will be the protagonists in different scenarios throughout the booklet so that the children we work with (aged 8-11) can relate with them.
“
- Zaynab Osman, Palace for Life We’re looking for 3 male and 3 female characters:
1
Mixed heritage female White female
3
Muslim female Male black
5
2
4
East-Asian male White male in wheelchair
6
The characters could look like they are part of the school football team and aged between 10 – 11. Clothing colours could be a mix of red and blue to represent Crystal Palace.
1
Mixed heritage female
This character was the first one I tackled. Her design lay the foundation for the rest of the characters so it was integral that the client was happy with the style I was going for. My initial ideas show that she was going to look a bit older and her body shape was to be longer and more athletic. After talking to the client, we decided that it would work far better if she were younger. To do this, I changed her face shape, the size and placement of her eyes and made her body shape rounder. It was Dave’s, my boss, suggestion to have a character wearing his favourite Crystal Palace F.C uniform. My original plan was to have a male character wear it, however, I quickly changed my mind early on. I felt that the personality of this character with the way I drew her meant that she appeared more outgoing, sporty and competitive than I had initially expected. It was a pleasant surprise and, to be honest, I couldn’t picture anyone else wearing the shirt.
2
White female
Now that we had a sporty, loud character, I wanted to ensure that we also had someone who appeared to be more quiet and sensitive. To achieve this, I researched into the concept art of Disney’s Tangled. The main character Rapunzel is a girl who has grown up experiencing the world looking out from her tower. Her design includes these big, expressive eyes with free flowing hair. I took inspiration her and made this character’s eyes rounder and wider than our previous design. Her hair is also loose but always tucked behind her ears. She doesn’t talk much but enjoys listening and watching, having her hair in front of her ears and face would make it harder for her to do that. When drawing her key-art, I had her running alongside our previous character, she is looking back. For her, it isn’t about winning or losing (although, it is nice to win sometimes) she’s not super competitive or confrontational. She enjoys the sport and enjoys spending time with her friends.
3
Muslim female
So, this brings us to our final female character. We have nicknamed this one ‘Zaynab’ after our client. The previous two characters had a lot of light blues and white so I wanted to make sure that we also included some darker shades too which would represent the more current kit of the team. Choosing the colours turned out to be harder than I had expected. After looking at some Muslim sportswomen, I had seen that some of them wear long sleeves and leggings under loser clothing. This meant that her design was more complicated than the other girls so it was harder to create a colour balance within the design. When my boss first saw some of the colour experimentations, he really liked the white trainers with the blue and red stripe. I had originally done this because I had seen the latest Crystal Palace kit and it was red and blue strips. However, Dave pointed out that they looked like an old pair of adidas trainers that he had wanted as a kid. After sending this one off for feedback, our client pointed out that my earlier designs had an eagle on her shirt and that it would be a nice feature to include. So I drew up a few eagle designs and started playing around with where it could feature on her clothes. ‘Zaynab’ is the second shortest out of the whole group.
4
Black male
This character went through a lot of changes from the start. Like our first girl, I fell into the trap of making him look too old. However, with a few tweaks to his face we were able to make him look his age! Our client also requested that we showed a character wearing something that resembled the more current football kit. I thought this character would be perfect for it, I even gave him the official messenger bag from Crystal Palace’s site. I also thought it was important to show a character wearing glasses but I wasn’t sure which character would suit them best. I experimented with this guy and I felt like it just worked so it stuck. His glasses are also the same shade of red as the red on his Crystal Palace shirt. Out of all of the characters we have designed, this character is the tallest.
5
East-Asian male
Our client suggested that we should represent children from a range of backgrounds including those from East Asian descent. He is second tallest male but the third tallest character. . When designing this character, I did some more research into children’s fashion. The majority of the characters wear very sporty clothes or football kits and I thought it may bet nice to see someone dressed a tad more trendy. Having said this, it was still important to the brief that the character wears clothing that they can still exercise in.
6
White male in wheelchair
I had left this character until the end, fearing that he would be the hardest. I prepared myself with an abundance of research and took on the advice I was given from other artists who use wheelchairs. A lot of them were disappointed by not only the lack of representation, but also, the kind of chairs that are often used by the few characters out there. In my research, I came across a few children’s wheelchairs. The majority of the chairs don’t have push handles . They are also built to be as lightweight and as comfortable as possible. One such chairs I came across is called TiLite Pilot Wheelchair. This chair was a big source of inspiration for me and you can see a lot of elements from the TiLite Pilot in this final design. The client requested that we also show a character wearing jeans and a hoodie. I also wanted a character to be wearing more blues and having the main body of the chair in red meant that I could do that.
The last few things that needed to be done were the character height sheets and some character art of the whole group interacting with each other. The height sheet shows how tall each character is and I have included a coloured line for each one so that it is easier to see how they all compare. The next drawing is of them all with ice cream. I thought the image was rather funny and it was enjoyable to draw too. It was also interesting to draw what each character’s ice cream of choice would be. It was my colleague’s suggestion to give the boy in the wheelchair a tub of ice cream as it meant he could put it on his lap and still move with his friends independently if they chose to go somewhere with their treats. I also thought it was a nice idea to include the character Zaynab offering her ice cream to the clearly upset character who dropped theirs. Her first instinct is an act of selflessness rather than to laugh or look on. In contrast, our blonde girl drifts to the back of the group and looks on fearfully because she doesn’t like arguing and is afraid of a disagreement between her friends.
Thank you!
Please check out more of my work here: www.lottieloco.com