Assorted Characters from "Juicebox RPG"

Kathleene (The Showman) Character Sheet
Mayhem (The Trickster) Character Sheet
Landon (The Historian) Character Sheet

Inspiration

My inspiration for this project was my friends! Each of these characters is based off of one of my friends in the Discord server (titled "The Juicebox") I made over COVID. I wanted to get everyone involved by making a server-wide RPG. I love RPGs and find creating movesets extremely interesting. It was super fun to work with unique elements with each personality and weave them into a wacky fantasy world. "Kathleene" is based on Katie, who loves theater and is in one of my comedy groups. "Mayhem" is based on Hayden, who is a bombastic menace. Lastly, "Landon" is based on Landon, who is an extremely nice person that loves history.

What it does

Each character page has the in-game sprite as the focal point. These sprites were designed for comical, silly movements in the animations to add some "juice" to the game. Implemented, they will be used in combat and traversing the 2.5D open world. The more fleshed out sprites are drafts of the character UI neutral sprites, which will be used during dialogue between characters and NPCs. The expression examples are to get a feel of character facial reactions, and the color tests are to provide some different conceptual color schemes. The text on the side provides the characters' names, character taglines, and brief backstories.

How we built it

Though some of my initial sketches from a year ago were either in a notebook or in Krita, I made each sheet in Photoshop. I refined each part of the pages piece by piece, and then added text on top.

Challenges we ran into

My main challenge was time. I was initially not going to submit and only really set on it the day before submissions were due. My art shown is extremely rushed, and definitely not as polished as I would've liked. Another challenge was being able to fully showcase each character's personality. I wanted to make sure each character was unique and could be distinctly "read", so at the last second I supplemented my character sheets with small expression sketches to get some of their mannerisms across.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Truly and honestly, I'm just glad that I got to submit. I generally have a very low self confidence around my art and was initially not going to submit, but a lot of faculty and friends encouraged me. The art may be very rough and rushed, but I'm happy I was able to finalize it enough and submit it under such a small time frame. Another accomplishment I'm proud of for the project as a whole is how cohesive and fun each character's stories and personalities are. When/if my team develops it to the point of playability, I think players will definitely enjoy how wacky and silly the combat and story will be.

What we learned

What I learned from this process is that a piece will never be perfect and a piece will never be final. I find myself getting in ruts about my art, constantly pushing myself down the endless tunnel of refinement, only to not be satisfied with the "final" result. Art is an iterative process, and in that loop, it's important to be kind and patient with yourself and also to (in the best way possible) "settle" for what you can create in the time that you are given, because oftentimes, it's better than you think.

What's next for Assorted Characters from "Juicebox RPG"

My next move with these characters is to hopefully implement them into the game! I have the movesets and some story beats fleshed out as well as the flat character sprites, so my next step is to work on animations to bring these zany characters to life!