I’m currently reading Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft, and in the first chapter, the assignment is to design characters for a western cartoon. The main protagonist, Dillion, is coming next, but this post focuses on Polly, the romantic interest.
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Normally, I follow Kieran’s character design approach, which starts with archetypes, identifies tropes, and then adds a twist. This process usually keeps me grounded, but this time, I felt stuck overthinking it. Instead of forcing structure, I decided to loosen up and gather references and draw. That shift alone made the process feel lighter and more intuitive.
CONCEPT
I narrowed Polly down to three core ideas: redhead, lady, and tomboy. For red hair, Lee Kanker from Ed, Edd n Eddy immediately came to mind. Her curly hair covering her eyes always stood out to me, even though I didn’t regularly watch the show. Despite her Brooklyn accent, she visually reads as someone who could pass for a country girl. To lean more fully into that western energy—and to step outside my usual Overwatch references—I looked to Jessie from Toy Story.
Balancing “lady” and “tomboy” pushed me to explore several directions. I considered Lana and Lola Loud from The Loud House, but ultimately Spinelli from Recess felt closer to the firecracker energy I wanted. Jessica Rabbit helped define the elegance and beauty side, while Chie from Persona 4 grounded the tomboy aspect with a more practical, confident femininity.
DRAWING
When I moved into sketching, I aimed for a Bruce Timm–inspired style. I used a reference of Renee Montoya as The Question for the pose, which gave Polly a confident, grounded stance. From there, I started pulling elements from each influence and testing how they worked together. I deliberately focused on the “lady” side first, knowing it needed to be balanced carefully against the tomboy traits. Jessica Rabbit’s influence led me to a strapless gown with a right-side slit. From Spinelli, I pulled the idea of layering a jacket over a dress and adapted it into a more cowboy-style jacket. Chie inspired the utility skirt, which I modified with western details so it felt functional rather than elegant. Jessie’s hat and Lee’s hair helped anchor the look.
Once the design was roughed in, something still felt off—the gown wasn’t reading clearly enough. To fix that, I exaggerated the slit. At this stage, it does read a bit like an apron, which I know I’ll need to refine later. I also added a ponytail to further separate Polly from Lee Kanker. The boots, inspired by Spinelli, helped reinforce her toughness.
COLORING
After adding pockets to the jacket and skirt, the design finally clicked. That’s when I moved into flat colors instead of starting in black and white. I separated the design into layers—hat, hair, skin, jacket, gown, skirt, and boots—and assigned each its own color.
While working, I happened to be watching the 49ers vs. Seahawks divisional game. I considered Seahawks colors at first, but the 49ers’ white, gold, and red palette felt more suited to a Western. I went with gold-brown for the hat and skirt, white for the gown, and deep red for the jacket to make her pop. I pushed the hair brighter than the jacket for contrast and kept the skin tone warm and muted to ground the palette.
So this is Polly—the result of trusting intuition, experimenting through iteration, and letting references guide rather than control the process. She’ll be appearing in Magnum Arcana, my western series that’s part of the Bee Terrific C Media shared universe.