Bunny Character: Iterations

I've begun iterating on the bunny character (named Russi Rabbit for now, unless I think of a better name for her) - for reference, this was the initial design I created. This design was heavily inspired by Sanrio mascots such as Hello Kitty as well as classic Sonic the Hedgehog designs. I felt like there was potential in the concept of a bunny character, but as a gaming mascot specifically she is flawed.

Russi Rabbit's initial design. I thought it could be
too feminine and I wasn't sure if it was really
suitable for a game protagonist without some
reworking

Before I started reworking her, I threw together a quick moodboard. I was thinking about a variety of things here: a general vibe for the character, potential 'hair' styles, playing about with the idea of a face with no mouth or eyebrows that can still be expressive and even clothes and other details for her face. 

Quick moodboard exploring different elements of the design that I wanted to explore

I first thought about different styles of bunny ears, so I looked first at Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the Bunny Hood item from the Zelda series. Then I thought how the ears could be more like 'hair', so I looked at characters such as Lola Bunny (Looney Tunes), Juliet Starling (Lollipop Chainsaw) and Lissa (Fire Emblem: Awakening). I also looked at Rayman, his hair parts two ways, almost like ears, but he also has abilities like gliding. When thinking of characters who are expressive without a mouth and/or eyebrows I thought of Gromit (Wallace & Gromit) and Puffles (Club Penguin). I was unsure what direction to take for clothing design, so for the time being I was looking at Rosy the Rascal (Sonic the Hedgehog), Filia (Skullgirls) and Sailor Moon. As another way to stop her from being too feminine, I thought of adding a "rough 'n' tough" edge to her with some facial details like bandages. This idea was drawn from Little Mac (Punch-Out/Super Smash Bros.) and Villager (Animal Crossing).  

Top row: ear iterations, middle row: face iterations, bottom row: facial details

 

I knew I liked the idea of the tuft of hair since it adds a little more personality to her design, but I experimented with this regardless. 1 was inspired by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the Bunny Hood from Zelda, these are more traditionally like bunny ears and therefore I felt like something was missing. This is where I thought more about the ears being hair-like, so I tied them back in 2 in the style of Lola Bunny and removed the tuft of hair. I thought there was something uptight and threatening about this design, not really reminiscent of a character embarking on an adventure which is what I wanted. For 3 I gave her a fringe and made the ears like long pony tails, even adding some tufts to the ears. I liked the 'fluffiness' of this design and came up with design 4 based on this and characters like Lissa from Fire Emblem who have 'fluffy' pony tails - I also exaggerated the front tuft of hair to keep that fun vibe.

At first, I thought about keeping the 'no mouth' that I had with Russi's initial design and drew 5 based on Gromit, I changed my mind on this in the end and moved on to different designs. 6 was inspired by a combination of classic Sonic designs and Puffles from Club Penguin, I liked the eyes taking up a big portion of the head as I felt this allowed for more exaggerated facial expression. Design 7 was a little more Sonic-like in the proportions of eyes:nose:mouth ratio; I separated the eyes and made them more semi-circular with an obvious straight at the bottom. With design 8 I made the eyes a little smaller, while I want them to be expressive, I think there is a limit to how much of the face they should take up. I made the nose rounder (less realistic) and put the eyelashes at the bottom of her eyes, since it almost looks like whiskers.

For design 9 I went for something typically cute and girly: hair bows. I knew I wanted to make Russi's design inclusive (due to the stigma of overly feminine or childish characters and games on male gamers in the West) so I moved on to design 10 where I have her a headband. This was a way to separate the 'hair' and her head when it comes to colouring and possibly animating the character; I also gave her freckles as a 'cute' touch. I wanted to push a tom-boyish attitude onto the character so designs 11 and 12 feature bandages to show the "rough 'n' tough" edge I was talking about earlier.

First set of costume ideas for Russi

1 is a slight rework of her original design, I removed the polka dots from her dress and gave her frilled socks. I still like this design and it has the potential to work, but I'd like to explore further before deciding on that for sure. 2 was a simple sporty vibe, it felt like an easy way to showcase this tomboy vibe, but somehow the design didn't really suit her. I thought a skirt would be a nice touch for keeping animations dynamic so most of the designs here have a dress or skirt with that in mind. Design 3 was inspired by characters like Chie Satonaka from Persona 4 (who is renowned for being a tomboy herself). I took the idea of modifying a school uniform with a hoodie and rolled with that. Keeping with the school uniform theme, I looked at Sailor Moon and typical Japanese uniforms. The clothes are sweet but I'm not sure it's what I'm going for. 5 was another uniform-inspired outfit, but this time I looked at primary school uniforms, where shirts with a dress overlay are common, I returned to the idea of putting a headband on her head as well. Design 6 was inspired in part by Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie, his backpack makes him look like he's ready for adventure and I feel that is a fundamental trait to a platform mascot character. When it came to design 7 I ditched the skirt idea and tried an outfit that combined the feminine and masculine in a much clearer way. Finally, design 8, I combined ideas from a few of the previous designs. I feel like it is a faithful representation of the "rough 'n' tough" personality but really it's a little complex for a mascot.

My next step is to iterate on these designs until I find a balance for the personality and simplicity of the design; from there I can contextualise the character into her own game world.