Personal Project

Designing a character for Magic: The Gathering*

* This is a personal project intended to showcase my character design and rendering skills.

Narrative & Reference

To start the project, I partnered with a narrative designer, who was also MTG enthusiast, to help merge the narrative design and gameplay mechanics that felt consistent to MTG. Here is the resulting narrative:

Sindriira Sh’laar is a dark elf born into nobility, raised on the value of tradition, and trained in the arcane arts as a cleric. The dark elves revere vampires and so Sindriira received what is known as the Kiss of Lilith as part of the final ritual in her training. With the merest gaze, she can freeze the viewer into a state of awe, bending them to her will. Her goal in life is to become the house matriarch as a way to continue her society’s values and influence many future generations.

The mood board falls into two main categories:

  1. Functional Reference. Things like how armor and weapons function in real life, as well as a refernece model for proprotion and attitude.

  2. Aesthetic Reference. The overall vibe/atmosphere as well as aspects of style, like shape language, color palette, and rendering techniques

Functional reference board.

Aesthetic reference board.

Costume Design

Thumbnail sketching:

  • I set a few broad design stakes in the ground (i.e. vampire, female, royalty, mage) and then sketched as broadly as possible with those constraints. 

  • Explore one idea per sketch.  Don’t sweat the details, just focus on the initial read-through silhouette and shapes communicated through solid blocks of value.

As I revised ideas, I analyzed what’s working and what’s not: 

    • Practicality needs to be considered when designing costumes.  Some of the designs felt more like a cosplayer rather than like a person wearing their natural, functional clothing.

    • Fully develop the designs and don’t leave empty gaps that feel unfinished.  Refining the design is about exploring a higher level of intentional detail after the main blocks of form have been figured out.

Posing & Expression

My goal was to convey a personality that is arrogant, powerful, confrontational, and carries themselves with nobility.

For the main pose:

  • I wanted this character to look powerful and in control through her body language. The camera is at a low angle looking up at the subject to make her look strong.  

  • Making the character pose dynamic helped convey energy and power. In the final pose, she uses her magic to levitate while bringing her whip chain around to attack, adding contrasting angles and twists to the action.

For the head and facial expression:

  • I explored the narrow, angular features found in a lot of Elven characters as well as large or piercing eye shapes, drawn up eyebrows, pursed lips, and a swept-back hairstyle.

  • The head and face went through many iterations to fins the right balance of someone that is both capable of evil and also felt appealing.

Rendering Techniques

  • Gradient Maps to Block-In Color

    Gradient Maps are an adjustment layer where one can specify a color to replace a value.  This helped to quickly test out color palettes using the grayscale block-in painting as a foundation.

  • Painting Over 3D Models

    Creating a low poly mesh for props like the armor was helpful for drawing more complex hard surface materials in perspective while staying consistent to the original design.

  • Photobashing

    Stock photography collaged into the painting quickly added a sense of realism. When painting over the photos, it was important to make sure the lighting, values, and detail was consistent with the other parts of the image.

Final Design