Refurbishing Old Characters

So this is something a little different than Fire With Fire. We still have some cool things on the way, but it'll take some time before they're released to the player base.

Anyway I started this series a few months ago after I stumbled upon some really really old drawings and stories I wrote as a child, back in 2001. I thought it might be fun to take those characters and draw them again today; not just to poke fun at how bad I used to be, mind you. More to examine how I designed characters back then as opposed to now.

If you have any old drawings laying around I'd highly recommend this exercise. The older the better.

Old

New

The story was basically your average mecha with pilots controlling oversized robots (you can see the toe of one in the upper left corner of the old drawing) to fight evil, or something along those lines. This guy was the leader even though he was the youngest person on the team. A goofy American kid in a jean jacket.

Old

New

She was something of the team mom, being among the oldest of the pilots. She wore red and her robot had a fire motif, so naturally she was a hotheaded character in the story. ...Cliches were still new to me back then. 

At first she was the lead pilot's "servant", but after (justified) complaints from a reader I rewrote her to be his "assistant", then finally decided it would make more sense for her to be his chaperone instead. I was (am?) not great at writing female characters, clearly.

Old

New

A member of some kind of secret desert police or something. I think he wore a disguise in the old drawing, but if you didn't know that it just looks like a weird robe. 

Note how the old version of all of the characters have the same haircut so far...

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New

She was a tomboyish police officer and a sort-of-but-not-really love interest for the lead pilot. 

Back then, everyone wore plain V-necks and bell bottoms for some reason. I had trouble with clothes. I feel like if I had designed this character today, she'd wear something like work boots and army cargo pants.

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New

Mo' money, mo' problems, mo' V-necks. He wasn't much more than a reticent, slightly less mature version of the lead character.

The biggest takeaway I can see from the old drawings is that there just wasn't a lot of variety in my characters back then. There wasn't a single person of color on the team (actually there was one, but since their appearance was based on a real person I've excluded them from this series). And, there was no real variation in weight or body type -- all of the pilots were who you could probably consider thin and moderately okay looking (Generically Cute). Same Face Syndrome ran rampant back then too. Not knowing their personalities they all kind of look like the same person at a glance.

Anyway, it was fun to do these and I'd like to do similar studies of other characters if I can dig them up. It's a good way for anyone to examine their old patterns and thought processes.