"The Woman in White" character sketches - Count Fosco

Here's one of the most entertaining characters I've ever encountered in a story. Count Fosco, the fat Italian con-man who collects white doves and keeps white mice in his pockets. He has partnered up with the main villain, posing as an eccentric doctor.

Some face exercises.

"The Woman in White" character sketches - Anne Catherick

Here's the character for which The Woman in White is named, Anne Catherick. She's a frantic, vengeful woman who's escaped from an insane asylum, and for the first half of the story, the male protagonist believes her to be a ghost. She wanders the roads and outskirts of town, vowing to tell her secret to someone she must save. Anne is all sharp angles and gaunt limbs wrapped up in a shawl. She's supposed to be frightening at first, then sympathetic.

I'm not satisfied with this design, so I'll come back to it later.

"The Woman in White" character sketches - Marian Halcom

It's one of my goals to someday animate The Woman in White musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber (not by myself, but with a team of animators). It was a gorgeous musical -- and my favorite one of all time -- as well as being based on my favorite book. The stage play itself suffered from bad luck and never made it to the States, and that was that, but I think the music would lend itself perfectly to animation.

I've sketched a few characters as they appear in my head when I'm listening to the play, and first up is the main character -- or the character who feels like the main character to me -- Marian Halcom. Marian a strong, no-nonsense woman from the Victorian era, who looks after her younger sister Laura. As it says in both the book and the musical she's not traditionally pretty, but she makes light of this constantly with a sort of busy brusqueness. She dresses in muted colors, not only because they suit her but also to let her sister shine. When things go bad -- and of course they do because this is a Victorian thriller -- she ends up being the only one who can do anything, and kicks ass at it.