Character Design - Piper (The Big Guns) for Tugboat Comic

Hi all!

Been a bit under the weather so I haven't been posting much, but tonight I'm excited to talk a bit about my process for designing this turtle for my comic!

If you want to check out my other posts in this series, you can see them here:

Adeline (The Captain) | Mag (The Pilot)

This character's name is Piper, she's the "fighter" of the pirate crew. I definitely had a lot of trouble nailing down her design and truthfully, I'm still working on it!

Hailey (Tugboat's writer) and I really liked the idea that our pirate crew be made up of a variety of species. We thought it would be fun if their universe was made up of all sorts of different anthropomorphic creatures, it would give us a lot of room to play.

Here are some of the first drawings of Piper.

The first design didn't depict her as a very strong character. We wanted Piper to look like she could clobber any foe that looked at her the wrong way - she is, after all, from a race of warrior turtles. So I designed some tougher looks.

I thought the idea of her wearing a starry leotard under her shell would be pretty funny. The juxtaposition of her deadpan, cold personality with a cute outfit made me laugh, and fit the tone of the comic well. We don't take ourselves super seriously.

I ended up liking these designs more, so I did some color tests.

I still wasn't fully happy with the colors so I left that for another time and moved on to her shell. I wanted it to be the focus point of her design - the defining part of her silhouette. I felt like I was getting closer with these designs, but I wasn't fully happy with it.

I still didn't feel like her silhouette was as clean as it could be. I tried to get a cleaner look - and I ended up with this.

I was really happy with it! I liked the colors, too. She's a darker character, so I liked the idea of her color palette being a bit more muted. However, after getting a lot of feedback, I ended up adjusting her coloring to be brighter and lighter, and different from her shell. Her expression and movement wasn't reading as clearly as a lot of the other characters, who are very vibrant. Here is her new coloration:

Then, I did a bunch of gesture and expression drawings to see how I could capture her movement, especially with this giant solid, round shell on her back at all times.

And that's how we ended up with this turtle! Thanks for checking it out, let me know if there is anything specific you'd like to see in the next post!