Character Redesigns

Hey, Ultra here.

Let me just start by saying that I wanted to make this post a lllllllllooooooooooooonnnnnnnggggggggg time ago, but I just never did. I think I was just super busy with work and college. Anyway here’s my character redesign process!

I made this character years ago, I think I was in the 7th or 8th grade. I, unfortunately, don’t have the original drawing of this character, but this is the earliest that I have.

I made this pic back in 2012 on Colors for 3ds. Back then, I was really struggling with keeping most of my characters consistent. I didn’t have a grasp on anatomy, gesture, lighting, shading, or pretty much any principle of art. I was just having fun making weird characters.

I made this one a few months later on Paint Tool Sai. I remember struggling quite a bit with him, his face and body just didn’t come out right.

I made this one in 2013 in class. I liked this one a lot at the time, I thought I was improving because I felt like I got the face right and liked the body. At this point, I felt I had a solid reference for this character.

Fast forward to 2021 and I was randomly obsessed with arcade games, arcade machines, and fightsticks. This obsession pushed me into the world of fightsticks and how they are made and customized. I think it was the YouTuber nihongogamer that really piqued my interest in them. I then really wanted to make my own fightstick and started sketching ideas for the panel art. I wondered what character of mine would look really cool on one and realized I had a great character for it.

This is his latest design and the one I like the most. I had a lot of fun redesigning him and felt I was able to iron out all the problems I had with the previous design. As I keep drawing and improving, he’ll look even cooler!

This is what my fightstick looks like. The one I originally wanted is the espada by JxK Designs. I decided to go with the PowerA Fusion because it was cheaper, easy to mod, and it’s good for someone’s first fightstick. I still want the espada, but that won’t be until sometime in the future.

I made this character the same time around I made KotO. I think I actually drew her years later though.

This isn’t my earliest drawing of this character, the earliest is a sketch that really doesn’t hold up well, but it’s on my Deviantart if you want to go searchin’. Anyway, this character was originally a lava rabbit… that’s pretty much it.

I made this one alongside the KotO drawing from 2013. This character didn’t change much unlike KotO, I was comfortable drawing her and didn’t struggle as much. So why did I change her design? Because of college and KotO.

This design came from my screen printing class. I wanted to make a cool print design, so I was like, “Hey I have this cool character I just redesigned. What would go great next to him?” That’s pretty much the reason this character got a redesign. I knew I wanted her to look cool, fierce, and monstrous like KotO, so I changed her from a lava rabbit to a lava snake. Quite the transformation, huh? My original idea for this print was to have them face off against each other like a fighting game, but as I’ve said in my “Final Print” portfolio post, the print studio was falling apart and we were running out of time and materials. But I really do like how she came out.

Overall, I really like how these characters look now. Redesigning them has given me a lot of inspiration for my other characters and I now have a better idea of what direction I want to take this set of characters.

Lastly, I want to show off this commission I got from Tana_taka_3rder on Twitter. I’ve always wanted to see how other people would draw my characters and I knew this guy would do an amazing job with these two.

Thanks for reading!