Creating Characters for a Secret Project 🤭

A little insight into my character design process on a project that I'm working on RIGHT NOW. This is real life, people!

Last week I went to get my eyes checked. I sat in front of a young optometrist and we went through the motions.

“Can you read the top line of letters, please?” she said with a smile.

She kindly encouraged me to rest my chin on a large, weird eye contraption that I assume everyone can recognize but no one knows the name of. I felt calm and happy and got lost in my thoughts when she suddenly shot a bright light into my eye. Now, I have been through this before. I’ve had glasses since I was eight.

But this time, it was INTENSE. The light BURNED. I thought, Oh no. This is it. This seemingly sweet optometrist is really a secret evil villain and she’s shooting a laser into my eye!!! She must get her sick kicks from blinding patients!

I imagined her life, growing up poking the eyes out of dolls, popping googly eyes in arts and crafts class while cackling maniacally, grueling through university courses just so she could finally ruin the eyesight of kind, innocent illustrators like myself. Oh, the humanity!!! Why me?? Why her??

And then she finished. She removed the laser-bright light from my eye and mentioned that I had a freckle on my iris.

"How cool." she chirped.

I realized that she wasn’t a supervillain, and she probably wasn’t trying to melt my eye out of its socket. Most likely, I irritated my eyes staring at my laptop for too long earlier that day.

But in that second of panic, I imagined a long-winded backstory for my villainous optometrist because I LOVE creating characters. I love thinking about who people are, where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what SKELETONS they have in their dramatic closets. (And maybe I’m a sucker for dramaaaaa).

Over the years, I’ve found that this wild imagination process is a great skill for a book illustrator! When I start working on a project, I always try to think up a backstory for my characters, no matter how small the project is or what kind of characters I’m drawing. And I think this process allows me to create distinct and unique characters that people relate to! Because who hasn’t thought their optometrist was actually EVIL??? Or maybe their dentist? What about an evil vet or two?

✍️ Creating Characters for a Secret Project

So I’ve been working on a smaller non-book project recently that I thought I would share with ya’ll. I was unsure if I should share my in-progress work, but then I told myself, “Hey, Marissa! These VIPs want to see your process. There’s no room for feeling embarrassed. They deserve the content!”

Because this project hasn’t been announced/hasn’t been published, I can’t share the name of my employer but I can show you my character creation process sans some of the bigger story details. Here we go!