Character design is one of my favorite things to do and so I was thrilled at the start of my time on SAFEhearts to have the freedom to spend some time exploring this cast of characters. Since these characters were going to be the face of the brand and used over and over again in many different contexts I really wanted to put in the time and work to get them exactly right. These guys have been pinned up on my desk for over a year now and have been developed further (both in personality and posing) in several books but I still look back at this initial completed group pose and am fully happy with how they look. They have held up to over a year of repeated use and personal scrutiny and still are the mark that I try and achieve in new poses. They have become real characters to me and there is something really special in the process of seeing specific characters come to life in the way that these ones have.

I have included here a progression that includes some of my earliest sketches and you can trace the  development all the way to the final colored design and then the model sheets that I created to further explore their individual personalities!