Luke, Anton, & Walker

[raspberryrain]

From left: Luke, Anton, and Walker.

Of all the characters in my 3D work, Walker was one of the first conceived. I came up with the idea for him, and named him, before I even started doing 3D renders. When I did get into 3D, but before there even was a comic, I considered making him the star of an interactive story.

The problem with having the character concept first, and then a long time where he was just in my head, was then designing his visual appearance. If I start with a sculpt, I can mostly grow a character around it. If I start with a more abstract personality concept, building a sculpt that “looks right” is harder, because my imagination doesn’t really know what it wants, or something.

At one point, when he was going to be the star of an interactive game, he was going to be a bit burlier, built a lot like Luke here. But part of me wanted him to be skinnier.

When I built Anton, I almost decided that he was Walker. He had the hair prop I had been planning to use for Walker, and he was roughly the right physical type. But then I thought maybe he was too pretty, or too skinny, or something. Somehow I decided just to call that sculpt Anton, and try again.

So then I started the comic, and then started to bring the rock band, Walker’s band, into it. But I had no Walker actually built. I thought about making comics where the rest of the band stand around and wonder where he is. That affected how I saw the character. He became more defined by depression than he had been previously.

I finally sculpted something to be Walker, officially. And I thought I’d sabotaged myself. Anton had claimed the Kozaburo long hair, so Walker got stuck with an old AprilYSH hair figure to look different. And I thought I’d overworked the body. He wasn’t quite good-looking enough anymore. He was a little too goofy-looking. Maybe I should have just used the Anton design. But it was done, and I didn’t want to go over it again.

Later, I sculpted Luke to be another character’s love interest, and actually I think he’s better-looking than either Anton or Walker. I wasn’t thinking about it, I don’t think, but he does kind of look like Walker could have if I hadn’t insisted on making him skinny. But I’m glad he’s not Walker. I can let him be a more relaxed character without all that baggage.

...and I just realised that I haven't actually posted anything with Luke in it, and barely anything of Anton. Well, I built them, anyway.