Character design is something of an arcane art, and being entirely self-taught in the concept, I fell into a very subtle trap.  I read this blog post from Rachael Rippon the other day, and it made me think back to my own experiences with this trope and how it affected the development of Suzi.

I’ve talked about my motivations for creating Suzi Quazar,and now that I have the first issue completed, I want to look back at Suzi and how she has grown from concept to current state.

Original Concept

When I first created her, she was really just a digital doodle, so to speak. I was playing around with the idea of a retro sci-fi theme for my personal blog, and I wanted a cutesy character to use as a kind of mascot. The character was never designed to have a name, I just wanted a sexy, stylized space girl. Easy enough. I more or less stumbled across the character by accident, but once I did, I knew I wanted to do more with her than just being a mascot. The name came to me quickly, and I put together this quick character card.  Now, I am certainly not ashamed of this work at all.  But I can see where my concept of a female hero was skewed.  Growing up I read a lot of fantasy comics, so the chain mail bikini was deeply ingrained into me as acceptable attire for any heroine.

Time for change

About midway thru Issue 1, I was looking at Suzi and wondering what tweaks I could make.  (more…)