Drawing original characters for 28 days straight, here's how it was like.

I started making characters from 2 to 30 November as a personal project/challenge during the end-of-year holidays. I wanted to increase my collection of characters since I felt I needed to add more. Additionally, I felt it would be a good way to practise character designing.

Before the project began, I did some preparation by drawing some concept sketches of characters I had in mind. I also did research by browsing social media platforms, like Twitter and Pinterest, to find inspiration on what kind of character I'd like to make. Questions like "Do I want it to be cute or cool" and "Should it be male or female?" also started popping up as progressed in research.

As the day of the challenge started, I learnt halfway through that this wasn't as easy as I thought. Coming up with character ideas were easy but finalising them was a different story. Not only that all art of the characters had to go through three stages to finalise, sketching, lining, colouring, but I'd often have mixed thoughts on how I'd draw them. I struggled with these issues a couple times but after all those days of drawing, I felt a sense of relieve after finishing the final character of the challenge.

A memorable character I felt gave me the most hassle was the purple slime character as I wasn't familiar with drawing slime-like designs. I had to look up helping images online so that I can continue making him.

Overall from this experience, I learnt that designing characters and art in general takes time. Many times I had to look up tutorials and look at references so that the characters I make are good-looking. Additionally, a lot of research is needed to think of what kind of character you'd like to make. This includes things like their design and personality. If anyone wishes to do something similar, I'd recommend to do light practises of character designing, like making small doodles of characters from different media, as a way to prepare yourself for making your own original character.