Street Performer Development

Earlier in this project I knew thgat I wanted a street performer as on the real boardwalk there are often many little shows happening. I did not know what kind of performer it was going to be until I saw a video online of a ring performer this sparked some inspirastion and I began making notes of the character.

She is a hyper energetic character, she both helps the player and serves to confuse them.

Reference Board

This is the reference board. My inspirations are mostly from a circus aesthetic, harlequinn patterns, lots of tulle and exaggerated face make-up. The characters personality is loud and bright I want her appearence to scream this as well.

Once I started sketching her I did some observational drawings of actual hoop performers to see how they do it and what muscles they use, this helped me see that her body would need to be more complicated than the previous simple NPC’s shapes, such as splitting the torso into three shapes. For her costume I had a lot of fun with it, testing different materials and shapes plus corset make ups. For her hair I took inspiration from an influencer from instagram I follow who specialises in hair shaping, most known for her star looks. It was difficult to draw these at a 3/4 angle but they add to the look and communciate her fun personality.

For the character turnarounds in Ibis Paint X I settled on the full design for her costume, adding frills and playful elememts to it such as the skirt being asymetrical. This created a very striking silhouette. The most difficult part was rotating her hair around and keeping the recognisability of the star shape.

These are colour cominations in Photoshop, for the harlequinn patterns I just imported turxtures and used clipping masks to change the colours, this was easy and efficient so I could do these quickly. The first options colours are too pastel allowing her to be washed out. The second option feels to dark and though I want her to stand out in the environemnts this would look too out of place. I chose option three as my peers liked it and it was more fun, staying in line with her personality more than option four.

Final Character Design