Sketchy isn't a character I came up with this year - I made him when I was a kid, but he wasn't interesting in the slightest, so I wanted to redesign him to my current art style, and give him more personality.
Here's some of the drawings I found of him, the rest are probably on my 3DS
Starting out with some silhouette studies, I had limited myself to one type of proportion - I wanted a character who was cute and small - someone who would seem new and vulnerable to the world - I tried a couple of different shapes, but I couldn't steer away from the big head, little body combo - so I figured I'd do the more limited animated character's silhouettes, instead (bottom) - ironically, I felt I had more freedom with their designs. I also added some faces and arms to show how i'd make the shapes into characters
as for the face silhouettes in the middle, those came after I had finalized the designed of sketchy - I wasn't sure how to draw his face - I just knew it was super malleable, so I did some practice by making random blobs and turning those into faces - I really got the hang of drawing this character
(note: the first design, I did, is on the right, and the last is on the left) Taking inspiration from past Bryn's drawings, I started with just a simple style update of the character, but the circle head wasn't interesting - so I gave him a weird almost-hexagon shape and big eyebrows - the silhouette was much more interesting, but he still didn't have a key part of his design that made him recognizable - I guess I was after a trademark thing for him - tried a scarf, I thought the follow through animation would look amazing, but might be a little tricky to do in the game, so I simplified it into a ribbon. The ribbon works great - it really adds to the character's cute demeanor
As I mentioned in the silhouettes part, I started practicing drawing him, making a model sheet helped a little, but it didn't show too much variation, so I did that expression sheet.
The side view, on the model sheet, had to have his face turned slightly, because showing the actual side view, with only one eye, looked really weird.
And finally colours - originally I had it that he was transparent, and maybe the background was a paper texture, like refill paper, or even just a white void, that looked similar to the ASDF movie series - but I decided to instead make the world look all abstract with shapes floating about, à la Krazy Kat.
So I though I would meet half way and make sketchy change colours depending on the backgrounds - if the backgrounds are darker, the line art would be the lighter colour. I also want the backgrounds to slowly fade to the next character, and sketchy adjusts his colour accordingly, as opposed to each level being a different colour - but the changes would be slow, as to avoid any eye strain or epilepsy, of course.
