Monopoly Streets -- Designing a Character

For Monopoly Streets I was given the privilege of designing a cast of characters to accompany the classic tokens from the boardgame.  I'll post art for my favorites, and ones that didn't make it, but first, I thought I'd show the process for one character. We we're trying to come up with a character to accompany the wheelbarrow, and the first thing to come to mind was some sort of farm type. My first pass was a back-woodsy-hill-billy type.

This ended up being one of my favorite sketches.

The next stab was a more Joadsy-type farm feller.

I thought he ended up looking pretty good with color.

Alas, it was decided we needed more diversity of the female variety, so I started trying variations on the farm-girl.

As is the case with character design, we decided to take bits and pieces form sketches we liked and combine them in one.

From here on out, for every revision I laid a sheet of marker paper over the previous sketch and refined it.

Another pass.

Trying to give her a bit more personality.

Okay, let's just give her a nice happy expression, and no bulging biceps.

Part of the process is putting all of the character together in a line-up to make sure their silhouettes are all unique and that they contrast well with one another. I did about 20 of these with all the changes we made to characters. Maybe I'll do a post with just the line-ups sometime.

Finally, I get to color.

The final model (not done by me). This model was probably the closest to the original concept.

And she's off! They grow up so quickly...