New Character Design

Misty needs a nemesis—enter Kitty Nikkers

While I’ve been working on the different mouth charts for Misty—which I need to post—I started to think of a nemesis for Misty. I came up with Kitty Nikkers, her mother. Kitty is an old DC society woman that’s put off by her daughter’s career decisions and lifestyle. She reinforces Misty’s self-doubt and is the devil’s advocate in every situation, a vision of constant disappointment.

I like using my ArtRage+iPad while creating things like character design. I can turn the script-writing function on when I first create the file which records every stroke in real-time. When I’m finished, I play the script back in the version of ArtRage I have on my computer. Here is the video render of the script playing. You can see how the character evolved.

Kitty changing

Kitty’s evolution was interesting. I was thinking of things like a skeleton and a preying mantis. She was looking too much like a repressed school marm in platforms. That’s why I started drawing a second figure. I tried to make the second drawing opposite attributes. She ended up turning out to look more like Peter Griffin from Family Guy. I was getting a little frustrated. Then I thought I would be cool to use some of Misty’s charcteristics, but age and exaggerate them. While I was drawing her, I thought of Elaine Stritch, and a episode of Regis and Kelly with Carly Simon. While on the show, Carly was wearing a metallic green pant suit and truly looked like a preying mantis next to poor Regis. Little touches like the belt came from Balanchine. In some of his pieces, the ballerinas wear leotards with a matching thin black belt. Since Kitty is uppity, I thought that look would go well.

I should be posting some of the mouth charts by the end of the week.

 

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