Graveyard Shift 02 - Character Design Lauren Normal

 Rex's original story is brisk in its pacing and doesn't dwell a lot on detailed descriptions. That was perfect for my needs, as I wanted to have a lot of freedom in designing the characters and setting. One thing I did have to go on was the cover illustration he created for the story. As you can see below, it's kind of rough and he doesn't exactly follow his own descriptive text (illustration shows "Loren" as a blonde but the text says she has dark hair).

© 2023 Rex Munsee

Here's the text from the story:

“Evening, Loren,” he smiled at the tall woman, wrapped in a long coat and carrying a large handbag. “You’re right on time.”

“Hi, Victor.” He watched as she set her handbag down, shrugged out of her coat, and picked up her bag. She handed Victor the coat and he folded it over the back of his recliner. As she was smoothing out the wrinkles on her solid green scrubs, he gazed at her coal-black hair which contrasted with her pale skin, which his deceased mother would have said was a “peaches and cream complexion.”

Loren vs Lauren

If you read headlines, then you'll have noticed that I changed the spelling of the lady's name. Although "Loren" is an acceptable spelling of the name, in my experience that spelling is usually for males. "Lauren" is more often for females (and that includes the two to which I am relate). I discussed this with Rex and he was okay with the change.

So, spelling settled, I started work on the character sheet. I don't always do character sheets for my own work, but as I'm working with a collaborator, I decided it was something I should do this time around. As it turned out, it also provided me with space to make notes about the various assets and dial settings I used to refine her look.

As you can see, I'm still playing around with the hair color – I'm not sure how light or dark it will be. I'll need to test it with the dark backgrounds called for in the script before I will make that decision. After this, I have three more character designs to whip up.

As you can see in the notes, the main figure is Victoria 4. I've documented the various dial and prop settings on the sheet (I didn't share these with the writer, as this would only confuse him because he doesn't know anything about Poser or 3D art). My standard workflow is in play: I create 2-to-3 renders in Poser 13 and transfer them to Clip Studio Paint for compositing, setting the tones and clean-up.

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