2D CHARACTER COMMISSIONS

Designer/Freelance Illustrator on Instagram and Twitter (@Tricika_x)

W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 - P R E S E N T

Some of my best/most favorite work! All done via contact social media. Work included designing or working with original designed characters, and show/game fan art-based characters.

Clients often commission me for a character reference page, desktop or mobile screen saver, or for other use on other platforms (twitch streaming, YouTube).

PNG TUBER SPRITE EMOTES

Client: Alexis S. @xviolata

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What’s a pngtuber?

Twitch streaming and YouTube for gamers, artists, and personalities are all the rage these days. If you chose to have your face and/or identity hidden with a persona, you may chose to become a vtuber or pngtuber. The difference between the two is that the “v” in vtuber stands for video, and adopts a 3D model that can move via rigging. The “png” in the latter stands for .png, the image file. If you’ve tried visual novel games or played dating sims such as My Hatoful Boyfriend, Mystic Messenger, and I Love You, Colonel Sanders!, these games use sprites similar to how a pngtuber would use theirs. Pngtubers use their sprites by syncing their face to certain sprite “emotes” to convey emotions.

Both vtubers and pngtubers can come in fun designs and have many emotes for the user. Someone may opt for a pngtuber persona because models are generally more inexpensive and less complicated to maneuver than vtube models.
Vtubers have been on YouTube in the cracks of the gaming/streaming community since the mid-2010s, and only since the pandemic has their subculture really taken off. As of 2022, vtubers and pngtubers are almost an oversaturated industry, with vtubers expecting their models to cost anywhere from $500-$3k.
My client is trying out to be a game streamer, and had given me a couple designs to start out with for her character. She wanted to go for a design similar to the god Anubis, except as a goddess. She was aiming for was a flirtatious persona that would be fun to roleplay as online while on Twitch.

Formatting + Processing

Below and to the right are usually how the process for formatting with my clients go for png models. They can always ask for more with additional charging but the standard is a default emote with 4 standard others, and 3 customs depending on the kind of persona/original character they’re trying to portray as. This particular client wanted a more flirtatious character, so all her customs were leaning on more suggestive emotions.

Throughout the commission process, a lot of consulting is involved for the client because most of the time there will be continuous changes to the character’s design before the final rendering. The image to the bottom right shows that she struggled with how the hair would be colored, so I always give clients flat color renders to help them with their design thought process.

male! QIQI cosplay design, genshin impact

Client: Jeffrey L., UCLA alumni

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Cosplay and Gaming

Cosplaying is being able to “dress up” as a favorite or popular character from any form of media (TV show, movie, animation, book, etc.,.). A good friend of mine commissioned a grown-up male version of Qiqi from Chinese-based RPG game Genshin Impact to cosplay for next summer. I was told to design something like a character sheet to generally help reference or gauge out what his cosplay would ideally be like. This was my first time attempting something like this, and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to do something like this, especially given such high artistic liberty, as my client always has done. I also love and enjoy playing the game myself, so it was easy to take a couple screenshots and get really into the details. For more difficult angles to reference the original character, I went to Games Fashion Archive.

Original design of character w/ cape

Original design of character w/o cape

Left: My design process sheet. Every client I work with gets a process sheet to seee my thought process in the making of my artwork and tips and tricks I use as an artist.

Sketches and Linework

My client is a bodybuilder, so he wanted me to make something similar to his body type, hence designing a grown up male. Originally the sketch was going to have a more conservative look— which was long flared sleeves like in the fem version, and a thinner, more rat-tail like braid. We ended up opting for the short-sleeved look with the gauntlets depicting the original design on Qiqi’s sleeve cuffs, and made the hair more thicker.

Flat Color

I had color-picked using the eye drop tool from the original character design (middle image, taken from the Games Fashion Archive). There were a few changes in the color combination of the apparel since it was differently structed from the feminine version, for example the “gauntlet sleeves” on male Qiqi were color-picked from the main sleeve of the fem one, and there’s more of the turquoise on the pants instead of opting for the white color of the socks.

Shadows and Lighting

One of the most difficult parts of redesigning a male version for my friend was getting the talisman calligraphy correct. The screenshots of the cryo vision and talismans are from Games Fashion Archive, with a little help of perspective tools. and while I have little experience in Japanese kanji, I wouldn’t say I’m very good with Chinese calligraphy.

I finished off the rest of the drawing using multiply, overlay, and normal layers, and posterized the normal layer to get more values.

FEM! sung jinwoo, solo leveling

Client: Jeffrey L., UCLA alumni

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Twillight vs. golden hour

My client was trying to figure out whether or not the kind of lighting the character should be in, so I made him two options (at no additional cost). He ended up taking both images for his monitor as ambience for the time of day that he was gaming.

A MANHWA DESKTOP BACKGROUND

Monitor specs: 2560 x 1440

This is art based off of the main character from a korean webcomic, (also known as a manhwa) called Solo Leveling, or 나 혼자만 레벨업, alternatively translated as Only I Level Up. My client wanted a desktop background of a genderbent version of the male protagonist.

Reflection

I enjoyed working on this project because there was a lot of artistic freedom for this commission, and he didn’t have any concrete ideas on posing or background, only that he wanted the character to resemble the original design and to have an urban landscape as a background.

This commission is also important to me because it began to delve into the more mature part of character designing, where I have to think about explicit audiences and the general audience. I charge additional fees for NSFW versions, available privately to clients who ask.

oc full body and portrait

Client: Alexis S. @xviolata

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What’s an “oc”?

(N.). Definition: Abbreviation for “original character”. An oc can be a character for a roleplaying group, a persona for streaming, social media, or a character created to help build up a written or visual character for creative works, whether it be a book or comic the user is making.

Ocs are a common (if not primary) part of my freelance commission work. A lot of the times the commissioner is still in the works of developing a final design, so I’m usually here to help them with the process as well as come up with a final render of the design. For this client, she had come to me a couple of times beforehand to make other characters. This white-haired figure you see below is the so-far final design of one of her main oc.

Past References

Nov. 2021

First oc design idea by my client. There are many similarities between the newest one in March vs. this one, including the body tattoos, tail, and short hair.
Dec. 2021

One of the first commissions I made of this character. From the original design, I worked with the client to make small changes, and the oc was given a more pinkish undertone, smaller tattoos, and thinner bangs.
DEC. 2021

Cropped version of the commission for my client. For this project this part was to make couple/matching social media icons for her and her significant other.
Nov. 2021

Reference drawing from the client herself. Her original design was a color palette of black, neon green, and purple accents.
Mar. 2022

Newest design of the oc. While the client still kept some of the color palette, she opted for white hair and different tattoos. The client was also developing the kind of character her oc was and told me she wanted me to make a rendition on the “tails” of the oc’s new design.

My client had chosen two different poses for the character, a full body as reference to the tails and the body type, and a half-body shot to showcase details of the face and hair.

All my sketches are inspired from Pinterest or things I see on social media. On the left were some quick gestural sketches. My client went for a full body B, and a cropped version of A to get a half-body shot.