About a few months back now I started the concepting of my dream game, it will be a 3D action adventure platformer with light RPG elements, mainly inspired by Rayman 3, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 Bush Rescue, Kao the Kangaroo Round 2, Psychonauts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3. The game is centered in the world of dreams (still a working name lol) which is the world we all see when we dream at night. So it's also quite literally my dream game haha.

The first thing I set out to do for my self was to moodboard the overall vibe and feel of the game, I always think from visuals, story and concept first and than go to design. Once I established this, story ideas came up and also the first general ideas for designing the main character. Which led to the task of really designing the main character.

Story- conceptwise there were a few key things I wanted to keep in mind when designing the character these were:

1. The world is a dreamscape, so reality can be exaggerated and a bit random,

2. The story was going to be about someone who felt like he/she was so different and didn't belong anywhere eventhough in this dreamworld nearly every creature looked vastly different creating an interesting contrast,

3. The character needed to be spunky, energetic and a bit on the cute side, since I liked that feel for a protagonist a lot in other 3D platformers.

With this established I began my journey of finding the main character. Down below I will show the proces from early exploration to eventually the current final design.

The Hoodie(s)

One of the first ideas I had when coming up with the character was the implementation of wolf like hoodies or a wolf like hoodie in the design which could be used as a gameplay mechanic of disguise as the character didn't feel like he/she fit in in any environment, so he/she could maybe use this to fit in more or resolve conflict with a more intimidating look. Also the idea of an outfit with two hoodies felt really sureal and dreamlike to me in aesthetic.

Eventually the hoodies ended up looking like this for now:

Finding the right protagonist

I started my quest for the protagonist with finding the right head for the creature, first widely exploring options and later refening options.

Exploration

Very early ideas. I liked the idea of big over exagerated teeth, so when the hoodie would be on the disguise would be more convincing and aesthetically thought they looked cool and iconic because of the big recognizable elements and also energetic, but what creature would have these teeth?

Exploration of the teeth under the mask as proof of concept, also trying to make the mask a bit more cute while retaining its looks.

Trying a different direction, Kitties!! I mean why not a likeable dream cat would be really cool, but ended up abandoning this idea pretty fast, might end up as an NPC as I would love to see this cat coming to life in the game somewhere aswell.

The Black Sheep concept

Eventually I came to the idea of a black sheep as conceptually it adds 2 extra double layers of meaning namely:

1. The Black Sheep as in someone who doesn't belong or feels he/she doesn't belongs in a certain group but is part of it, being a nod to my original concept for the character.

2. A sheep in wolfs clothes turning the established concept of a wolf in sheeps clothes on its head. This would fit in with the aesthetic of the wolf like hoodies and the game mechanic of disguise.

I still wanted to try to give the sheep the teeth I liked so that became the central direction of designing it's head.

Some early quick iterations of the head.

Quickly trying an early design with the hoodie, but I wasn't happy with the vibe of the head. It gave me spunky and energetic, but not cute and it felt too serious in tone I wanted it more lighthearted, stylized and bigger, more exaggerated so it would standout more as a character.

With these thoughts I started again trying to refine the sheep concept.

This was the first moment the design started to resonate with me. I kept iterating from this silhoute trying to bring more personality in it.

More spunky and energetic due to the jagged lines and roughed up hair.

The current final design of the head.

Now it was time to find out the body proportions and outfit of the character which also took some iterating and exploring possibilities.

This felt to humanlike and not stylized enough.

With clothes it already looked a bit better but still felt off.

For the clothes I was inspired by all kind of large drapes and detailed patterns to be able to show off lots of color to make the character standout visually even more in the environment as a visual representation of feeling different and also drawing attention as it is the main character. This also felt like a fitting aesthetic with my vision of the dream world. An added bonus would be that it would look cool and floaty jumping up and down feeling dreamy and it lend itself to disguise.

Here I felt the torso needed to be elongated, it immediatly felt more fitting and the silhouette became clearer.

Here I was kind of happy with the body again, but something still didn't sit right. I also noticed the character was quite a bit bigger than characters like Rayman and Sonic which was not what I was going for so I left the design marinating in my head for a bit.

He still felt a bit to big in the previous version, but I was happy with the body, so I tried squeezing the design a little bit more and now he felt like a proper 3D platformer mascot to me. From here on I felt like I got the body proportions right and iterated slightly on this sketch which quickly led to the current final design of the character.