For the shops section of the boardwalk the NPC will be an ice-cream shop owner.
The vision for this character is a helpful guiding figure.
As the games story takes place in a childs imagination it would make snse for the character to resemble a grandmother.
Reference Board
For the reference board I rsearched actual Ample Hill bakeries to see what kind of uniforms and colours they use. The common denominator in these were neatly tied away hair and gingham like designs on the uniforms. I also researched soft scoop ice-creams and want to incorporate the shapes into the design.
These are my pencil sketches. I began with the generic shape of an ice-cream, two circles on top of an inverted triangle. These lined up nicely with a round body shape. I also gave her hair that looks like a scoop of ice-cream. There was one problem that I ran into where I tried to make the face pointy as well unfort7unntaely this looked weird when put on top of the round body. So I will have to lessen the more obvious ice-cream shapes.
These are the Ibis Paint X turnarounds, I used the same method to draw them as when I drew Jace, using lines to keep thinmgs proportional and lined up. Although I had to lessen the more dramatic shapes I am still very satisfied with the shape language I used. She looks friendly and welcoming exactly how I wanted. For her silhoutte her hair is interesting to look at and the welcoming impression is still there.
These are the colour thumbnails for her. I focused on bright colours, as the environemnt she is in uses pastels I wanted her to stand out. I chose the second colour combination because the colours complement each nicely making her pleasing to look at and the colours are based off of neopolitan ice-cream. I did not choose option one as though they are complementary colours the yellow does not suggest ice-cream to me. Option three was liked by my peers but it did not stand out enough in the environemnt as the colours where too similar it was also very alike the player characters design. Option 4 felt too flat and the green did not suggest welcoming.
Final Character Design
I am satisfied with all of the elements brought together. She looks how I imagined and wanted. The name came from the co owner of the real Ample Hill ice-cream parlours as her name is Jackie too.
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