Two characters in Kawaii style in Blender

For a cassette design project, I needed to make a 3D render of two characters (who are actually myself and a friend). And I wanted to have a sweet, colorful vibe for my renders, so I thought this course was perfect ! I also wanted to learn Blender for quite some time, so it was a great idea to start with this kind of project.

I started by drawing myself with some things that i like in life. I don't quite know how to use Clip Studio Paint yet, and I don't have great drawing skills, but voilà !

Here I wanted to note some influences that I have in term of style, drawings, etc. I (almost entirely) sticked to web artists.

Here are the first sketches. Yeah, I don't draw very well, but I tried. I wanted to tests different vibes, proportions, and ways to draw certain details about me and my friend (like necklace, clothes, eyes...). I also tried to do some poses.

After some days of work in Blender, here's what the two characters models look like wuthout any texture ! The only issue is that they don't exactly have the same head proportions, but I think I managed to have a good result. It has some details, like the necklaces which are very important, but it's not over detailed either and still remains simple and kawaii.

The materials ! They're quite basic, and I tried lot of different colors, especially for the second character (blue hair), because they sometimes didn't really render that well. Sometimes I had to distance myself from reality to make something that was visually appealing.

Finally, the poses with lighting and background !

I think I nailed it : I wanted to make a bubblegum/ice cream aspect. I wanted to give the sensation that the characters are made of clay, or ice cream, we have the urge to chew on them or play with them in our hands. I also took inspiration from Keekee, the character of Yasmin, by putting textures of little colored sparkles on hair. It was obvious for the pink character, but more complicated for the blue-haired character. I didn't intend to put sparkles on her at first, but without it the hair seemed a bit empty, and I didn't like it. So in the end I put sparkles on both characters, reinforcing the ice cream aspect.

And voilà !