How I designed Irina, the protagonist of Lyrestruck

Part 0: burst-of-inspiration mockup

When I wrote a title screen track – almost exactly a year ago – I drew up a mockup of a game idea it inspired. The version of Irina here was thrown together quickly to complete the sketch.

Part 1: scribbles

When I decided to take the project seriously I began the process of properly designig the main character. I took out some A3 pieces of paper, a paintbrush and some paint and started scribbling (with large brush strokes). This process wasn’t as useful for character design as it was for cooking up environments, but some ideas stood out, like in this selection.

I then switched to dry art media, which proved more useful for drawing forms resembling characters. One of these, which I drew with the pencil vertically and controlled with my index finger on top, stood out and inspired me enough that I decided to move forward with it.

Part 2: iteration & clearer sketches

With the idea chosen, I starting iterating. I drew my interpretation of the scribble, and started thinking about how the rest of the body will look. I took the idea from an earlier scribble to have her covered in cloth, to show her scared, closed-off nature. I then drew a few ideas and poses to figure out the design.

One of the poses I drew looked promising, so I inked it and coloured it, eventually arriving at a full-body ilustration that solidified this design as ‘the one’.

This is the first illustration of her interacting with some sort of orb, which later became the artifacts found in the game.

Part 3: clearing up the details

Having chosen a design, I wanted to figure out how to draw the fabric. I created a turnaround, imagining how the cloth would be placed on her body, and sketched a few ideas of what’s under the cover.

I wasn’t satisfied with the result, so I created a maquette out of Lego and some throwaway cloth, and settled on the final design.

Part 4: the sprite

I gathered some existing sprites for reference and drafted a few versions of the main idle sprite. The first was inspired by Castlevania sprites (including the width-to-height ratio), the second one was closer to my usual drawing, the third an edit of the first sketch and the fourth an exaggeration of that. I decided to go with the 3rd style because of the big face and easier-to-animate elements.

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