Journaling About 3 Character Designs

Two of these characters are from sketches I did a while back. Sometimes old art feeds new art, becomes something else or a refinement in small ways.

First I have the owl guitarist which I first sketched back in the year of the Unblocking project. Cute animals playing guitar is something that appeals to me at an instinctual level. I will probably publish this as a product design in my Redbubble and Society6 stores. My hesitance comes from the weirdness of how my TeePublic store was suddenly shut down by TeePublic. That happened over a month ago and I only still have guesses as to why they did it. Just feels icky all around. This design was one of eight I published so far to that store. It's associated with that oddness for me. I should shake the oddness and republish it elsewhere. Eventually.

Next is the TV Ghost. I sketched this one a while back though never posted it as far as a quick search and memory can tell. This one needs a little bit of greebling, an analog dial or buttons maybe. TV Ghost will be in my product design stores once I feel it's ready. I'm tempted to add it to the game I'm working on too, it may be an interesting looking and easy-ish to animate creature to encounter.

And third in this list of three: turtle-to-be-named from Word Turtle Island which that's also a work in progress project name. It's a 2D typing action game with an overhead adventure map perspective. I had a placeholder for the main character that was only a side view and it didn't feel right. This version has front, back, and side views I used to make separate parts to re-assemble in Godot using its cut-out animation features. It's in the game now. We'll see how the story comes along and what specific costuming and emoting I add to this turtle. I hope the design gets to the point where it feels right to also make product merch with it. That's something I did with my characters in Guitar Fretter, though they had the advantage of coming from a comic I wrote and drew for a few years so they were full of feelings and well character as the definition of character I just looked up says:

1. the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.
2. the distinctive nature of something.
3. the quality of being individual in an interesting or unusual way.

-- from an Oxford Languages google search result

This turtle is a character in a minicomic I'm writing in order to develop a bit of narrative to add to Word Turtle Island. Through that I'm getting ideas to make this turtle someone more distinct and interesting.