The next step was to refine the characters that I'd made so far and, considering the feedback I'd been given during the Premise project, decided to work on combining designs or to completely cut some as modelling and retexturing each individual design would likely be far too time consuming and generally inefficient. Condensing the cast would therefore be better and hopefully shouldn't have me running the risk of not having everything completed. The presence of a crowd in a shot, as Alan suggested, can be implied through the use of sound design and other methods.
Another (albeit minor) thing that I decided to do was to rename some of the characters. The most significant change and important for me personally was to change the main character's name; at the start of the Premise project, my story and therefore the main character was based off of a version of myself when I was younger, but as the project's progressed, I feel that the similarities don't really extend beyond the very basics of the 'switching schools' story and aspects of their appearance. Even though their original name was based off of a nickname, I decided to change it further and call them "Kit" instead. The second most important change was the renaming of Kit's old best friend as I just felt that her name didn't really fit her that well. Otherwise, background characters were named (or renamed) as an easy way of referencing them.
At this point, I had ended up with 12 individual designs (just a few less than before, and not all of them being ones that I'd have to create in a 3D space). I evidently still wasn't sure on Alice's design and was starting to think that since Alice and Violet shared a lot of similarities, that I should combine them into one. I was also beginning to consider making further cuts as, while narrowing it down to 12 designs, I could still have benefitted from shrinking that number down even further, the results of which are evident in the final lineup later on in the post.
Since multiple characters are going to end up using the same models but adjusted for their individual designs, it was very important that they be easily distinguishable from one another from faces and colour palettes alone. I still intend to model pieces to each individual model to enhance their differences further as well.
This technique of reusing and slightly editing different models isn't particularly rare though, especially for shows that either require large populations to be created or generated but also those that use software such as Adobe Animate where 'puppets' are required. Notable examples of these in children's shows include My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Bluey. The former tends to rely on the exact same models for a majority of the characters with slight alterations made for species or gender and so characters are usually meant to be distinguishable almost based on colour palette alone. The latter utilises a similar technique but each puppet is more heavily edited to match closely the breed of each character as the population consists solely of anthropomorphic dogs.
Again, a 3D version of this method is also used in The Amazing World of Gumball (though seldom featured due to the diversity of the character designs). One particular example is the family of balloon characters, which all seem to use the same model that has been retextured and their faces, which appear to be 2D rigs, are changed to fit the character.
Looking back at the updated designs for my own set of characters, I made both larger and subtler changes to distinguish between them. In regard to Kit and Evie, I believed that bits of their designs were a little too similar, so I reworked them. This culminated in giving Kit lidded eyes (which won't always be visible when they are emoting however) and flattening the top of their hair so it doesn't stick up like Evie's. Below is the initial design that I came up with for Evie's design before settling on the newer one which involved slightly longer hair with accessories and a brighter purple dress.
The final lineup below shows that I ended up with a total of 9 designs, 2 of which are the same character and 1 of which will probably not need to be a 3D character at all (Renée, the old best friend). Further deliberation had me removing Jake and Violet, and settling on the design for Alice which had used aspects from Violet's anyway.
My reasoning for the removals is mostly based around colour palettes: Jake's design, to start with, involved a lot of yellow and red of which could already be found among various other characters including Evie, Sam, T.J., and Charley. Alice and Violet's designs were, as mentioned above, extremely similar to begin with so it made sense to combine them into one instead of throwing out one or the other.
I am aware that the current lineup involves an imbalance of dog and cat characters, but it will likely remain this way: changing Alice, Charley, or T.J. into dogs makes their designs appear strange as I took inspiration for their fur patterns from real life cat breeds (Calico and Turkish Van cats for the latter two), and editing Alice's design to achieve the reverse effect in that she would more closely resemble Violet's Daschund-inspired design didn't fit either.
At the moment, though, I am reasonably happy with the lineup so far. If I end up having to make further cuts, I will likely prioritise the background characters with the most 'memorable' and vivid designs, especially those that don't share many colours in common with the rest of the cast. For example, it would probably be easier to get rid of Alice first as blue, pink, and white are fairly evenly spread amongst the rest of the cast enough to compensate for her loss.
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