Redesigning Hudson Stone + Enjoying Some Classic Shows/Books

A while back, I said I wanted to redesign a character I had, a General Hudson Stone, to be precise. Here be the start of the process~

Typically, I start a redesign (or just an entirely new design in general) with the face. Faces, at least for me, help inform everything else about the character, and the head usually has the most personality coming out of it, so I figure I might as well start there.

My main issue with him, I found, was how flat his face looked to me. Not flat as in the actual shape of his face, but flat in that the design communicated depth poorly. So after drawing his original/current design first, I began trying to round out and fat up his face a bit. His old face was essentially just a block, so I played with having its foundation being made up of blobs, then a circle and a block, then a circle and a blob.

There were a number of elements I wanted to maintain for his design. To be sort of intrinsic to him, in a sense. Jay has her pouty mouth, fat chin, and squished facial area. Sheriff has his defined tear troughs, high nose, and his facial elements running along numerous horizontal lines. For Hudson, he has a somewhat shaggy mustache, a droopy nose, and a butt chin. He also had very boxy eyes, something I got from a few of the Xbox avatar eye choices, oddly enough. Those didn't quite carry over as well as I wanted for whatever reason, but the other three things I knew I had to have.

Another issue with Hudson was that his facial construction seemed to hinder good expressiveness. For one, his facial hair covered his mouth. Almost, anyway. So I tried a different style, a puffier one that's split enough to see a bit of mouth. For inspiration, I looked at several mustachioed men in a distinctly Western cartoon style (looked very Disney, but I can't say for sure). The refinement and rearrangement of his features led to me pushing said features up a bit and giving him a bigger, more defined lower jaw. Better for that expressiveness and stuff. The jaw can move in a fashion independent from upper head... area, making the whole thing more pliable.

The last picture with all the shading is not necessarily meant to be the end-all-be-all of the redesign of his face. It was meant to check for yet another issue in his old design: it was somewhat difficult to figure out how to shade his face nicely, due to how flat it was. With different parts on clearly different planes, it's now much easier to put places of his face in shadow.

In other news, I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation~ During this break, I figured I should acquaint myself with classics, mostly in movies but in television as well. I'm only about five episodes in, but so far, I already love Riker, Data, and... that security lady, I hate Wesley, and I am continuously impressed by the creative writing and the powerful acting. I don't know if I plan to watch the whole thing, but I very much enjoy what I've seen thus far.

Also, I've gotten back into the habit of one of my old favorite pastimes: reading. To be more specific, I have "read" books by way of audiobooks. But I haven't read read a book, a bound book with real paper, in so long. I just hadn't had the time. A recorded voice can communicate or else impart various emotions onto the listener, but holding the book, turning the pages, and reading the words myself creates a much more powerful, much more intimate experience. And I missed that. So I started reading Swallows and Amazons, the original book of a movie I used to watch as a child. It, and the series, are about a group of English children growing up by the water and the boating adventures they have.

In addition to that, I, God willing, plan to finally get around to reading some Sherlock Holmes and some H.P. Lovecraft. Whether or not, I'll actually do that remains to be seen, but I look forward to it, should I get to it. Should probably finish Frankenstein, too, but honestly, I really prefer Bram Stoker's Dracula. Frankenstein is actually really boring...

#characterdesign #hudson #stone #genrechowderstudios