X’Barbara Character Design

X’Barbara is a human warrior venturing forth into The Yarning Portal!

I was recently commissioned by an organiser of a Dungeons and Dragons group to design character portraits for each player character of their campaign. I was given in-depth descriptions of each character’s appearance and personality, as well as a photo of each player’s character piece (cute little crochet dolls) as reference.

Like T’ae T’ae, X’Barbara’s design went through fewer changes as she was heavily inspired by a pre-existing figure. In this case she was described as being “literal Xena: Warrior Princess.
The only changes made to her initial sketch were an addition of some battle scars and and increase in her chest size (her mutiple falls being cushioned by her large breasts is an ongoing gag in the campaign).

During the detailing & shading stage, the client grew concerned with the amount of battle scars, so we reduced the number of scars and made some more faint, as if they are older injuries.