What was zhao's character designing process like?
Hello! Thanks for asking, I'll try to keep this as simple as humanly possible-
-the beginning stages of Zhao's character
(Ignore the bad quality of the pictures, I was lazy-)
I've actually had Zhao for quite a few years now, but I think these drawings I made like 9 months ago are the oldest ones that I could find. As you can probably see, in the begging she was a primarily jttw OC, I remember being super into OSP (which I still am), so when I started watching their jttw series I immediately got to making an OC because I really liked the world and all.
There's not much to say about the design honestly. But I will say why the hair changed, back then, her hair was very tiger-y but why has it changed so much if she's still a tiger? Well it's because back then I actually really liked the hair, but as time went on I thought it was way too much. However I really got attached to the whole "Cursed for disobeying your family so that you can never forget about them when you look at your own face.", so I decided to keep the orange hair just remove the details.
However a lot of the drawings you will see still have the stripes, but you'll see how they became more and more simple over time.
(note: All of the drawings you will see of her old design are pretty old so my art skills have improved-)
When I just started watching lmk I already knew I wanted to change up her character a bit. So I did a mini re-design. Again not much to say about her design except that I wanted it to look very demon-y (because she actually used to be a tiger demoness)
However I felt she was too "soft", so I changed up her character a bit to be more cold and "mature", because I wanted her to have a bigger contrast in personality with Sun Wukong. I'll get into that later :>
And as you can see I was still experimenting with certain designs but in the end I ended up with the last one for a while.
Then something awoke in me and I was finally like: This hair is mad complicated let's simplify this sucker-
So some (a lot of) experimenting:
(as you can see I've got a very inconsistent style)
And with that I eventually got this kinda design:
As you can see, this is was the start of a ✨new era✨
(you can still see these drawings up on my blog if you scroll down enough-)
And this design stuck for a while until I made a certain drawing for a certain @/camhues 👀
At this time I have started reading Circe and was very inspired by her character :0
She changed from being cold to more motherly. She's still mature but more clever, compassionate and caring. (yet still pathetic in my eyes). One of my friends here on tumblr @/doppel-doodles explained her PERFECTLY- "A fierce tigress in the body of a gentle mother cat" (like who gave them the right-), this explains her character very well because despite being very peaceful she's still a strong sorceress-
Now, Zhao is still kinda quiet and reserved considering her unhealthy past. But that ties a bit more into her connection with Wukong, which I'll get into in a bit.
I wanted Zhao to seem more "out of place", back then she just seemed like a basic bish girlboss OC and like someone who would make a good background character-
I also decided to give her a full name (because my dumb ahh realized Zhao is a Chinese SURNAME-) so I decided on Zhaoyan, also funfact Zhao's father used to call her "Zhaodi" because that name means "requesting a brother" (Because sexism yaaayyyyyy-)
My Zhao design is also heavily inspired by @/gigizetz Circe design, and her hair is very much inspired by Rapunzel from tangled-
And so yeah, then we got to her current design
While I can't really give anymore specific references, I can tell you a bit on how I settled on this design :D
Note: I wanted her to have a more exotic, tropical and ancient vibe if that makes sense. She is a spiritual maiden, sometimes even described as a sorceress, and considering the role I settled on giving her in the story it makes sense she would seem like "something new" or something out of the blue if you will. Even though she's a Peach Maiden, she doesn't exactly look like one, which I honestly think is really exiting to work with-
There's still some lore I haven't spilled yet that would say more about her design, but I hope to reveal that in the future!
Now, all the lore of her current character ties to one specific thing, aka her most important role in lmk- her connection to Monkey. Now as I mentioned, Zhao and Wukong were made to be opposites, or well to seem like opposites (one is chaotic and one is calm). Also the mear fact that the Chinese monkey zodiac and Chinese tiger zodiac are specifically referred to as not being able to get along so well.
But in reality they're quite similar, both get over looked because of their unthreatening personalities despite being really damn powerful. Both kinda stand out in physical appearance too compared to the other characters, and look alike in a way (same ginger hair and golden eyes). And not to mention they both push others away from them because of their pasts despite caring a lot.
A fun part about writing Zhao's character is she also serves as a way to find out more about Sun Wukong and jttw as a whole while still being her own character.
So yeah, that's basically it! Sorry for this being so fricking long I like rambling about my girl- (no I do not have a favorite lmk OC wdym?)
Fell free to ask more questions they're always fun as hell to answer!! :D
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Souls in the Sand: Concept Art
As I’ve mentioned here and there, I’ve spent the last two years developing an original story inspired by a small Origins+Empires server a few friends and I started planning. The more I developed plans for my empire to be a sprawling overgrown cityscape of ruins and stone framework inspired by the nether, the more I built up this backstory for the character I wanted to play, a small deerfolk boy named Esra. From there, and over months of working and reworking the story and its characters, I’m proud to say I’m coming up on a 100 piece gallery for my Masters Exhibition to display this story in the form of a song-inspired comic, titled: Souls in the Sand.
Over the next month and beyond the date of my exhibition in April, I wanted to start sharing my work here! I thought it would be fitting to first share all of the concept work I did for the characters last semester as I took each character from their old lineup and reworked them from scratch to see if there were any designs I could make more unique or appropriate for the story. This process consisted of four stages: silhouettes, full-body mock-ups, face and head shapes/designs, and experimenting with the final characters’ designs with a set of unique expressions that best fit their personalities and narrative role.
Since each character was reworked separately, the “new” concept lineup is a little disjointed (and some of the characters’ faces actually ended up different from their full-body designs), but I thought it would be fun to line them up to compare the overall cast to their old designs. With each character(s) I post the concept process for, I may share little bits of the work I’m doing or talk a little about their narrative roles as I go, but for now, have Esra!
I know I don’t post original work here often, but I wanted to share parts of this journey with you guys because it’s been very meaningful to me! And I hope all of the work I’ve been doing may at the very least serve as a bit of inspiration or encouragement for us to keep making silly minecraft stories, to keep drawing the characters we love, and to keep being creative in whatever way is meaningful! <3
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