On Character Sketches and Perseverance by Fred Koehler

This whole weekend I was supposed to be writing, but all I could bring myself to do was draw. Oh well. Wherever the muses descend, right? I had a pirate story that needed some characters, and apparently I was hungry, so I drew this:

 

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for the story, which was frustrating because I liked the characters. I ended up with my concept sketch looking something like this:

 

It didn't work at all the way I had hoped, and I’m thinking this is the point where most people give up. Or start from scratch. I saw it as a fun opportunity to stretch myself as an illustrator and see how I could take the intentions behind the illustration and make it work for the story. I redrew select parts of the characters, and ended up with these three sets of characters, and the last one worked perfectly for my story! (Yay!)