Hobos!

Even after my initial explorations, I tweaked Hubert the hobo's design a lot before I ended up with the one I based the model off of. The first couple that I really liked were big and fat with skinny legs. I had this idea of a big silly guy rolling around happily in an old back-alley.

I worked on my story more, and it started to become more important that Hubert wasn't just a hobo but a hungry hobo. Eventually, during one of my crits, someone pointed out that Hubert looked like he was pretty well-fed. Touche. I kept the design pretty much the same, but skinnied Hubert up quite a bit.

 

Over the summer, I took my character designs and worked on them till I felt like they were significantly more silly than they were when I'd started. I ended up giving Hubert his weird face-beard, adding liver spots, and making his smile goofier. The drawing on the bottom left is still one of my favorites :]