This week I tried to catch up with what I couldn't post last week.
So it means that I have only two days left for this week's project--designing a character a day.
You can see my last week's project (designing a place a day) in the following links:
So, here we go, a character for today!
(for my new TV drama script project, Crossing)
His name is Hwangjae Do (도황재). He is a 27-year-old gang member.
I like his name because Hwangjae in Korean has similar sounds to the word for "emperor" (Hwangje).
I chose this name because I wanted his appearance and behavior to be rather haughty.
I am not so sure I successfully captured that in my drawing. Maybe not. :P
But anyway, he is a person who looks like he is shut inside. He does not hang out, he does not talk much, no one really knows what he is thinking and is doing in his free time. But he does what he does (..) pretty well, so no one bothers to bother him.
In this sense, he is similar to Miso, another character in my story. She is a young melancholic writer (age 17).
(You can see my drawings and ideas about her here.)
In fact, Miso and Hwangjae know each other, and the nature of their relationship plays quite a role in my story. But their relationship hasn't been so significant before I drew Hwangjae. That is, after I drew him, I liked him, so I increased his role in my story. :P
I guess this is an example of how doodling one's character helps a writer construct a character and the relevant story lines.
ENOOOUGH pre-talk. Below is the first step of my drawing. An image of a rather haughty young man.
It took only a couple of minutes to draw this, and I was thinking, wow, it's going to be easy to construct his image. Well, it wasn't. I got stuck.
I couldn't decide his hairstyle.
Hairstyle, you might say. What is so important about a character's hairstyle?
I don't think it is very important. But the fact that I couldn't decide on his hair meant that I didn't really get his personality and lifestyle. Just take a look at people around you and you will notice that you can learn a lot about that person from his/her hair. So when I draw a character, I usually draw his/her hair first.
The initial hairstyle for Hwangjae was inspired by this character (구준표) from a Korean drama (based on a Japanese manga) "Boys over Flowers," played by Minho Lee.
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I didn't take a picture of that hair, but I tell ya, it was damn awful.
What can I do? Of course I searched the internet.
After searching for "male hairstyle,"I settled on one particular celebrity, TOP from Big Bang. He is a famous Korean rapper. I think he has a very distinctive style.
(Google image result for Top's hairstyle)
I picked a few options from here and tried them out on my character.
Hmm... mediocre. Maybe looked tooo young? I wasn't sure.
What the...
Baaaaaaa...
Oh, this one seemed better than previous hairstyles.
You see, if you change someone's hair his/her image really changes.
Shading process..
Trimming...
And the final product!
I think he looks a bit stronger (?) and more masculine than my initial sketch, don't you?
I also gave him a beige jacket and a turtle-neck shirt.
Many, or most of the gang members who appear in Korean movies or dramas wear black suits (or white... and often outdated and unrefined).
Well, I thought that giving Hwangjae a bit of atypical attire would tell something about him--not really belonging to the gang he has been working for.
But then of course I will have to do a lot more things from now on to really construct a character. :)
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