Four characters and the one-sentence fixes
The DigiNodes cast is 4 characters: b0b-bot, Hack-Rawr, Abbi, and Rokki. The designs locked in a single session back in April. Getting to that session took weeks of throwing art away.
Hack-Rawr started as a generic angry robot. Every version looked like every other angry robot you’ve ever seen. The fix was a rewrite of the premise: battered medieval knight armor, a red visor slit, and a scrawny guy inside. Kid wearing dad’s armor. He’s the only one in the cast whose face you never see.
Rokki took 4+ iterations and none of them worked until the design brief got compressed to one sentence: she dreams of being seen. After that everything placed itself. Nothing covers her face, ever. Big vulnerable eyes, confident body language, dark hair with a purple glow. The body says confidence, the eyes say please don’t look away.
The last test before locking: shrink everything to card size. Four silhouettes (round, blocky, small, tall), four colors (cyan, red, pink-green, purple), zero overlap. If you can’t tell who’s who at a glance on a phone screen, the design isn’t done.
The art itself is Midjourney. The weeks of vetoes, the premise rewrites, and the one-sentence fixes are the actual work.