The process of coming up with a character design usually takes a lot of time. Multiple versions of the character are explored, from head shapes to body shapes, and even to various color schemes.
Below is a very brief breakdown of a character design I developed for the Minotaur from ancient Greek mythology. Total design time was about 4 hours. (I normally take at least twice that time, but I was under a huge deadline.)
The final version is right below. But what’s more interesting, at least to me, is how I got there…
After reading the story Theseus and the Minotaur, I researched various images online. Google’s great for that. I ran several image searches. I knew the Minotaur was half man, half-bull. I purposely avoided looking at modern takes on the character. I went right back to the roots. I looked up bulls, muscle men, and even other portrayals of the Minotaur in paintings from the era to get a sense of who the character really was.
After collecting a plethora of images, I opened up my sketchbook.
First, I played around with head shapes. I wanted my Minotaur to be young, mean, brutish, but not too intelligent. I rejected some of the head-shapes because they either made the character look too old, too conniving, or too comical.
Once I settled on a basic head shape, I turned my attention to body structure and size. The bull’s anatomy is very front heavy, so I knew that a muscular version was needed, complete with large chest. This is where looking at images of muscle men helped. I first went for the “extreme”, then dialed it down. I made the head larger with respect to the body, to make the character look more “bull-like”.
Here was my first cut at the concept. I gave the character a loin cloth, shoulder armor and bandages around the arms. The bandages didn’t serve any specific purpose, and the armor for the shoulders didn’t make sense in the context of the story. The character was also looking too thin.
In this sketch, I made the head larger, and made the hands more fierce and savage. I thought about how the Minotaur would eat his victims. He’d need sharp bladed hands to rip their flesh open…
but he still looked a bit scrawny.
I beefed up the character’s body, and added a six-pack. I added metal bracelets for both the hands and legs. Presumably these were remnants of his shackles, and I thought that would work well for the character’s costume. This sketch would serve as the basis for the final image.
It was time to digitally ink and color the character. The colors of the Minotaur below were directly influenced by the oranges and blacks found in ancient Greek pottery.
I felt the character looked too dark, and tried to use a peach tone for the character’s upper torso and a dark gray for the bottom torso. This would drive home the idea that the character was half-man, half-bull. I also made the character’s face half-white and half-black because in some versions of the story (Theseus and the Minotaur), the Minotaur was described as being a white bull.
Hope you enjoyed the process!
-Krishna
I’d like to add that in doing a very thorough character concept, I take many, many pages of exploration before I settle on a design. This was an abbreviated design where I had a budget of only 4 hours available.