Character Development: SOFIA 2

Sofia Expressions sheet

Headshot

Developed Sofia Turnaround. There are many things wrong with this, and me and Laura feel the design is lacking, therefore I decided to give the character design to Laura, my Visual Development Artists to develop.

Laura gave the character more flair and, shall we say, she 'Disney-fied' it. Taking heavy inspiration from Alice and Wendy from Disney's films, Laura's given the character a lot more appeal, made her prettier and all round improved it. HOWEVER, having said that I do feel the original charm of the character has been lost somewhere, and so it was up to me to guide Laura en-route to improve the design. 

I told her to make the face smaller and rounder, adjust the nose bridge and the eyes at first.

Then I requested she bring the eyes closer together, refine the face shape even further, and lose the eyelashes as I felt the extremely pretty eyes were making the character feel much more mature and ladylike.

And finally I told her to just take the eyes wider ever so slightly to make it less cross eyed, make the eyes bigger and adjust the dress length and shoulder puffs.

After Laura produced a colour turnaround, we assessed the design. In the back of my head I felt it was too pretty to be a farm girl, but at the same time I liked it, Amelia felt that the design needed to be roughed up and given the farm girl look though.

However upon showing the design to Hillary Audit, she really felt that the design was far too pretty, like Sofia was going to a party! Hillary suggested dungarees, but I knew from the start I didn't want the dungaree look. We both agreed though that the bow was definitely too much, and the dress could be toned down a bit.

Laura produced 10 different images with 5 different dress designs and 2 different colour schemes. The one I believe I want to go with is this below:

The strap sundress, plain belt and bare feet look really sell this design for me.