The Bond of Four - Character Designs 1

   There are a total of 9 characters that will be featured in the animation (Excluding background characters), progress is still a little slow but I do hope to finish up most of my character designs by the end of this week (Something tells me that I might have to multi task and get a little storyboarding done too). Thankfully, most of their designs have already been somewhat established from my original project with them. There aren't many changes, some details are simplified so that it will be easier for them to animate (So I ended up removing lots of decorative patterns from their clothing, or changing an accessory to something much simpler to draw, or have it removed completely).

   I did mess around with some alternative hairstyles as well... you will see why.

Aoyi

    While these characters were designed more than 6 years back, I have gone through the rather exhausting experience of hearing people comparing one my main characters to several anime characters that have come about in recent years (Particularly Ryuko Matoi from Kill La Kill and Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan), and that just wouldn't do. The first thing I thought about altering was her color scheme. While she would originally be the 'red' sibling (With that fancy scarf of hers), my friend and I found ourselves liking the orange scarf look, and perhaps, the darker colored coat. That scarf is meant to look like the most valuable thing on her, and it seems to me that the brighter orange makes it look just that as compared to the original red scarf that she wore in the original designs.

   I did try to experiment with some alternative hairstyles for her as well, but I found that none of them really suited her or the setting as much as the one I had originally chosen for her (The mohawk is cool and all but... yeah, it would be pretty out of place, unless I created a whole bunch of other characters that sported something similar). Of course, these hairstyles can now be recycled and applied to a bunch of background characters.

Ayame

   There is going to be that one character that you will always enjoy drawing as compared to the rest, Ayame just so happens to be mine. Seeing as she will be fighting in the animation, I wondered for awhile if whether her outfit was still practical enough for such movements. I also didn't want to necessarily give away the fact that there is much more to her than a voluptuous concubine. One particular detail I definitely to change for animating sake are the beads around her waist, I had to change them instead to colorful bindings (Hoping that they will still go with the rest of her outfit).

Hojo

   It saddens me that Hojo was a design I struggled with for a great deal of time, despite its simplicity compared to the design of my other characters, it remains one of my least favorite (But NOT because it is one of the simplest ones). He was also the first character that I actually designed for my first project... While the details can't be seen here, I will show what I have in mind for his facial designs to make him stand out more.

   While rather awkward when it comes to the way he interacts with other characters, there is still some form of elegance to his overall look, hence the noticeably more flow-y robes (Especially when compared to Aoyi and Ayame, and honestly, the others characters). I pondered for awhile about whether I should completely remove that part of his costume... before deciding against it as that is another detail that just made him who he is. While Aoyi is stealthy and athletic, Hojo is most definitely the brains of group (I obviously forgot to mention earlier that his robes are based on chinese scholar robes).