Developing X-Gamer's Blue Nitro

Last week, I shared with you a new character for the gaming energy drinks brand X-Gamer, Powacrush. I have worked with the guys before on their first drinks flavour Zomberry, however, this time, they released not one, but two flavours! So this week I'm going to share with you the second character I designed for their third flavour, Blue Nitro.

The brief for this character was that she needed to basically be a futuristic racer, and as with Powacrush, I also needed to try and include some hints of blue and see if it complimented the character and added to the sort of look we were going for. Because futuristic can be taken in so many directions, I decided to do a few roughs and then sketch up a few rough ideas to see if what I was thinking was heading in the right direction. I sent those roughs over to the guys at X-Gamer and this is the lady we decided to develop.

This was a super rough sketch so I wasn't very happy with her face and none of her armor/tools were set in stone but I drew everything on the page whilst thinking about how I would envision a futuristic racer suit whilst also keeping everything functional. So I've tried to keep her armor lightweight and not too restricting, her weapons are easily accessible and the X on her chest is fitted onto a chest sort of rig which can move around when she moves so if someone was literally to go and cosplay as Blue Nitro it would most definitely work!

Although she is a racer, there was no requirement for her to have an actual vehicle, but when I'm designing a character I get really involved in the whole process and backstory behind a character and everything that surrounds how they function. So I also designed a hoverboard which could be strapped to her back, so she could easily reach for it, throw it down and hop on, but I thought it would also be really cool if when it was compact on her back, the boosters could still be activated to make her run much faster. Also, the canisters on her ribs/stomach are the fuel for the hoverboard, pretty handy!

Next up were the weapons, the guys at X-Gamer already had a direction, but just needed an X-Gamer spin on the weapon itself, so I began sketching out some ideas with references handy.

Although none of these weapons really hit the mark we did take some of the ideas and developed a new weapon which would be kept pretty simple and closer to the original reference material. So what she ended up with is a pretty cool frisbee type weapon, with a grip and directional arrows down the side. The arrows were something I tried to keep consistent throughout her weapon and her suit to keep pushing the idea of speed and how fast she is.

Next up were the poses! I recently got a new book full of poses so I already had some really cool ideas for the poses. The guys at X-Gamer wanted two action poses and one more neutral pose. I'm going to share the final images below with the pose ideas side by side for comparison.

First up was the hoverboard pose, I'm glad I chose to draw up the hoverboard too, purely so that we could add it into one of the final poses and add some more depth to the illustration.

The running pose was definitely the one I had pictured in my head as soon as I got the brief for her to be a racer. I also made sure that the weapon was completely separate from her hand so that it could be moved about and put where looked best for the graphic it was being used for.

Finally, the last pose was a bit of a tough one, because she needed to look strong but also not look too stiff. So it took a while to get to this final pose, but it was worth it to have something more relaxed for the character. So below you can see where the pose initially started and where it finished up in the end.

I hope that you guys have enjoyed me sharing the process behind these characters! If you want to see more of them, head on over to X-Gamers twitter where they are popping up every day ready for their official release! I'll also be adding a ton of new work, including these new characters to my website in January. 

Next week I'll be sharing some fan art from a zine I was recently a part of! 

Thanks for reading!