Anatomy of a Character Redesign
When I was 9, I designed my first characters and made my first comic...
I recently went down memory lane with an old friend and found myself in my garage digging out old art with her. We found the first time I was ever censored in life, senior year in high school, a Mother Goose play poster that I drew in a sexy comic book style, which threw the parents and teachers into such a fit that they took them down on the idea that while they couldn’t prove it, there was hidden “gang” imagery within the art. We laughed and laughed at my hot Michael Turner approved Mother Goose straddling a massive squawking demon goose… and then I saw it: The first comic I ever made. Pistol Possum and Gang. Spelling corrected.
Within the same folder was something special I had forgotten about. It was the first character designs I ever made. I was 9. It must have been 1987-88, and all I could think about then was Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So much so I remember pulling out printing paper and drawing Pistol Possum on pure obsession and instinct. And I did like people pray: On my knees over a bed mattress. My first comic drawing desk was a bed. And I didn’t care. Nothing could stop me from making something like Ninja Turtles. Not the pizza loving dude version of them. That hadn’t even been invented yet, or I hadn’t seen the first cartoon yet at that time. We’re talking the turtles that murder the Shredder in the first issue after slaughtering an army of Foot clan and nearly dying of blood loss themselves in the process. Just a gorey ninja action grimey sewer romp with such style and energy it’s no wonder it became the phenomenon we know today.
And it hit me: I’ve been doing this since I was 9? I’d never stopped to think about that. How much experience I was gaining each time I made another comic. I just made it and hoped for the best or didn’t bother finishing a lot of the time. I couldn’t believe I had made character designs at all. And they weren’t that bad really. I was taken aback at how I was thinking about design elements even at age 9 that worked for the character. Look at how Rabbit’s sheathes are carrot shaped. They have shoes, belts, there’s a ton of functionality to these. I think seeing the turtles have such cool belts and things to hold their ninja weaponry inspired this.
After posting this online a I got a lot of people asking if I would redo this as a comic today, and many others asking about Radical Rabbit. Spelling corrected. Again.
They wanted to see a me redo him as I would today. The challenge interested me so here we go! Let’s remake RADICAL RABBIT!
I knew I wanted to remain true to Rabbit. His blue jacket. The many knives. The holsters for his knives. The appearance of being fast and deadly. This first piece was fun but something felt off. His squished style head isn’t doing it for me and my “popped collar” fetish err rule looks okay but still didn’t feel right. But a nice warm up at least.So I started again, this time I wanted to find the right jacket cut for him. Something with…STRIPES. This guy is about speed. He should look almost like a furry race car. Im a huge jacket fetishist too so finding this classic style I knew would work perfectly. This jacket became the reframing of the character. Now I knew how his head should be shaped and what kind of shoes we should give him. Sometimes a basic core visual theme helps guide the entire character. Red white and blue colors mixed with stripes and gives us that fast race car look we want.
I wanted to have some fun with the “carrots for knife sheaths” idea without being overtly caroony and silly with it. Even 9 year old me knew to make them gray and not bright orange. But this time I went even more subtle. His knives are now thick at the bottom and get thinner at the tip — like carrots do. These sheathed knives to me still imply the carrot shape while looking cool and different that normal knives. When he runs fast these sheaths can now come off of him like racer fins and once again we’re using the race car motif. It’s working out great!
Then I realized, how cool would it be for race cars to be his job — no, it has to be more crime related. Getaway Driver? Don’t mind if I do. That’s perfect for him. So now I’ve come up with a cool job for him on top of this new design. Now it’s exciting.
His sleeves and pants are pulled up just a little to reveal more white to break up the design, but also to give him a fast and ready to roll appearance. Driving gloves became a must and I liked tying them in to the knife sheaths with brown leather.
His shoes became something else completely unplanned. I abandoned the brown potato looking shoes of my youth, and put some high tops on there. The popped collar of shoes. Sporty, fun, awesome looking on the right character, especially one that moves quick. It was fun designing them based on classic vans and then invented my own brand: Hoppers. You can see their bunny logo on the side. I loved getting to bring the red, white, and blue together for these shoes too. They tie in well with the rest of the design and the stripes and lines on them imply speed. That means we’re doing it right.
After making this I realized he’s like the Driver from the movie Driver in some ways, which works for me. It was never inspired by it. Just a happy coincidence or flare of the subconscious. I only saw the movie once.
The final touch was scarring up his ears. I love a good scar. Watching rabbits tear each other’s ears off in the movie Watership Down was always so horrific yet cool to me. You could tell the tougher rabbits from their scars on their ears. So giving some to Radical Rabbit was a no brainer.
What helped bring this together was finding a visual theme early on and sticking to it while remaining true to the ideas I had already come up with as a kid.
This was a really fun design to take on and It was kinda magical revisiting one of my first ever designs/characters. Hope you enjoyed this insight into how I think when I approach character designs. Knowing your character and finding a theme that works throughout can make it a very fun time at work.
Thanks for tuning in
Anatomy of a Character Redesign
Enjoyed peeling at the process, thanks!