Since I was basing one of the main characters after an actual "person" from my life, I already knew what type of design I wanted to have for that character. However, for the spirit that this familiar guardian ghost of mine was helping, I only had very loose ideas so I started sketching.
As the guardian spirit was darker and more mature in design and nature I wanted this other spirit to be the opposite, bright and young with more fluid motion. So I started with a short but somewhat curvy feminine figure with large eyes and a thinner frame to make them look much smaller and younger compared to my other main character who was much larger with square shoulders and a big coat.
I also decided to have no identifying features similar to the guardian's glasses and coat, so any identity could be given to them and the player could perhaps relate their behaviour to someone they know, creating more sympathy for the character and investing them in the story more.
I considered this last point because about a year and a half ago I lost a younger friend to suicide. And now some time has passed and I have healed from that event, recognising him in features of media or art is somewhat comforting, like keeping his memory alive. And so after drawing this more curvy figure I also drew a more masculine or androgynous figure to fit that memory. By making the shoulder a bit smaller and still curving the hips and legs a lot I tried to lean more towards an androgynous look so they could be associated with any one of any gender.
Although I was leaning more towards an androgynous look I also considered if more of their design could play into the fact that I wanted their movements to be fluid and almost whimsical. So I did a sketch, both masculine and feminine figures, with quite long flowy hair. I imagine this animated the hair would be almost constantly flowing as if the spirit was in water. While I was still leaning towards having no features for a much more simple and ambiguous design I kept this sketch as proof of the idea for later consideration.
After these first sketches, I then moved on to colouring them in a few different ways to get a feel for which style I may use in the final product.
Taking inspiration from Limbo, Inside and Ori and the Blind Forest still as I've mentioned them before, I first drew the figures in black and white but then decided they didn't give the look I wanted. So combining Inside and Ori's styles, I decided to use a colour palette with more blue tones to represent the good and orange or red tones to represent any enemies I would later start designing. However the colours are somewhat muted, which makes anything glowing like the small child-like spirit stand out, I think adding to their behaviour that is much brighter and happy than the surroundings and other main character.
In these coloured designs, I did try out the hair and large eyes despite my original plan to see if I did dislike the way they looked. The eyes I made black to contrast the rest of the body and be opposite to the other character's eyes which glowed bright white. However, I did confirm that I think the features take away from the original idea of the spirit being androgynous.
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