Vector 3/4: Character Design Notes

     When I was showing my Vector movie poster to my classmates for a critique, one of them asked "Is that supposed to be you?" It wasn't. The character's original look was based on the generic action figure I had used to determine the size of my package design, but my classmate had a point; the dark hair and goggles did sort of make it look like me. This annoyed me for some reason, so I redesigned Carter Digby to resemble the teacher's pet from many of my classes. Besides having a different hairstyle and color than me, this particular classmate had a self-imposed uniform: light blue, button-up shirts and khakis. Carter would only don the original black following the Barbie genocide, to signify that he wasn't taking orders from Adobe or the Fashion Police anymore.

    Wassily Plevitz (aka Crappy Design) and Jon Pearl (aka The Eraser) would look like they did on the package design. Plevitz's look comes straight from the original Illustator story: "The man's most striking feature is his head, which rests between his legs like a codpiece...his pink leotard is decorated with a square inside of a circle".

     Norton Finn also appears on the package design as "The Duplicator". His hair is inspired by troll dolls, a nod to his earlier name "Con Troll C". On the package he's supposed to be wearing a long leather jacket, but I decided to give this look to Frank Connelly instead. A later sketch (above) seems to indicate Finn wearing a coat with furry lining.
     Barbie Kensington(below, left), as the name suggests, would be a blonde with unrealistic, "idealized" body proportions. Her doppelgangers would have the same body and face but with different hair and/or skin colors. As both a model and fashion designer, Barbie would be the only character to wear a different outfit in every appearance.

     Like Carter, Davis Steele's look (above, right) was based on another classmate. He was to wear an army green, military surplus jacket with shoulder straps, and have curly blonde hair styled in a lopsided manner. Some sketches show that I thought about making his hair straight because it's easier to draw.

     Tucker Crowley was meant to be a caricature of Tim Gunn...but I could never get it quite right, no matter how hard I tried.

     Fabian Romero was going to have thick-rimmed glasses, possibly with tinted lenses. He would initially appear in a plain dark suit, but then alter it to look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

     The face on the left, below, is definitely Frank Connelly. The one on the right might be, too, but the fact that I didn't shade the hair makes me think it was an alternate look for Carter.