Creating designs for “Ideals” was a fun and fresh experience for me as an artist. An “Ideal” is essentially a manifestation of a person’s personality, faults, and desires. It wasn’t supposed to be an animal or a human exactly, and they’re meant to lean more on the abstract side, often incorporating inanimate objects or iconography in their designs. What I found to be challenging about designing characters with essentially little to no constraints (appearance wise) was finding a balance of the “right things” to incorporate, and how to make them fit together so they still felt cohesive, all in a way that felt representative of the respective character. A core part of this process was having conversations with the art lead and writing down specific images, objects, and iconography that initially came to our minds whenever we thought about each character. Then we would synthesize our brainstorms into thumbnail sketches we could expand on, and share those with each other and other members of the team to get feedback.