Marlow

Staple features:

• gardener
• relaxed
• slightly larger build
• tanned from the sun
• sun freckled on face and body
• slightly sun burnt aswell
• match Leilani with flowers in her hair - smaller ones - from her garden
• slightly messy in looks, scraped knees etc
• Patterns everywhere!

First, some thumbnail silhouettes of Marlow, like with Leilani, I did not find these super helpful at this stage, as she is human, and I am focused on attire, I stopped pretty early.

Some light sketches to decipher her personality and posing, they are all seated, as I want her to feel quite cosy and chill.

Once I nailed the pose I wanted, I did iterations of her hair, this was a key feature I had chosen for her, so this was pretty important, I went through many animals to mimic like different types of owls, grizzly bear, lamb and fawn. Owl ended up being a crowd favourite and mine too, a friend told me that how I described her the first owl choice (which I was going to go with) was too cool-toned, so I looked for other variations to go for.

Owl 1

Grizzly Bear

Owl 2

Owl 3 (winner)

Lamb

Fawn

Owl 4 (a variation of Owl 1 with the eyes dyed into the eyebrows)

The outfit was pretty easy to decide on, I loved these overalls with the design going down the leg, super busy, but unfortunately strayed a bit too far from her personality.

I went to shorter dungarees which fit her much better. Then, to decide colours, the first was never really an option, but I wanted to see if anyone saw something fun in having bright colours on her.

Due to the poll clashing with my own thought that 3 would be the winner and from other verbal feedback, I tried out some more details on 2 and 3 to gather more data.

I tried the poll again with more details, seeing if it was a clear winner again.

Due to a very close tie from this second poll and from verbal feedback from friends, I decided to use elements from both designs, combining them to get the best bits from both. I asked about this design after and got confirmation that this was the move.

After figuring her out, all that was left to render her. I really like the way her face ended up; her clothes were a bit thicker as the folds were hard around her bent leg. I think I did alright with it, but next time I would look up some references for clothes folded in that way for help.

Just an extra of the vines in the back, I utilised the lasoo tool a LOT in these pieces, and this is exactly the outcome I wanted for them.

My time efficiency for this character was not great; there were a lot of elements I didn't account for, like background and the embroidery on her overalls. This set me back time-wise, but luckily I planned for it so it wasn't project ending sort of bad.