ProtoRig

 Where'd we leave off with the rig?

I'd been planning out the shapes for heads and bodies:

Theoretically, we could split faces into two parts: eyes/brows and nose/mouth. With the taller set of heads, the nose/mouth portion would scale separately to fit the head size.

I took a stab at a starter set of images:

And Nate built a character lab so that we could see what those pieces looked like put together:

• I've set up the Photoshop files so that we'll eventually be able to try and move their pupils around, but these are just "flattened" eyes for now.
• The names are lifted from the old Wildermyth name generator, which we'll update at some point. They help spark ideas though.
• The colors are also lifted from Wildermyth. Man, it's convenient having an existing bank of colors for hair & skin that feel plausible.
• Eventually, we'll have a range of squashing and stretching that the bodies will do to simulate different heights. Preliminary squashing in Photoshop was promising; you could squash quite a bit before it started to look janky. But for now, everyone is "tall."

Around this time, we decided that giving the colonists shoulders and a neck would be an improvement. I also filled out a few more faces and hairstyles to get a better gestalt of these guys:

I did a quick test with beady eyes as well, but it looked pretty bad, at least with the current head and face proportions. I want to give the eyes-with-moveable pupils a solid try. If we hate it later for some reason, I can fall back to reworking the faces to fit beady eyes better.

We're getting some little guys now! There's a magic tipping point where upon looking at any one of them, I switch from "ugh what even is this," to "Hello!! Who do we have here? Ohhhh I know who you are, I can probably make up a backstory and character arc for you on the spot. And we'll fix your weird jawline later, don't worry, you'll feel much better... Anyway, welcome!"

It's still early though, obviously. The longer/taller heads are going to need more attention, they still look awkward sometimes, but they can simmer for now. The next thing I want to build out is a starter set of outfit pieces to mix and match.