---
title: 'Meet Kyu'
url: 'https://sophiepf.com/blog/meet-kyu'
markdown: 'https://sophiepf.com/blog/meet-kyu.md'
date: '2026-10-25'
description: "Meet Kyu, one of my oldest characters, and her design's long history. While"
taxonomy:
  category:
    - Blog
  tag:
    - 'Character Design'
    - Kyu
    - Art
---

# Meet Kyu

## [Meet Kyu](https://sophiepf.com/blog/meet-kyu)

   25th Oct 2026  

Meet Kyu, one of my oldest characters, and her design's long history.

While Soul's Journey was still expected to run for another couple of years, I was already busy working on my next comic project, Kyu's story, behind the scenes. I learned a lot in the years I worked on Soul's Journey and, naturally, wanted to implement as much as I could into the process for the next big project. Especially, getting to character designs early on, so I set out to have a close look on Kyu, the main ccharacter of the story, and develop her design.

![Kyu Iterations pre-2016](https://sophiepf.com/user/pages/blog/meet-kyu/16-04-11%20Kyu-outfit.png)This was the state I had with her in 2016 and she'd undergone great changes before her. Her entire colour schemes was turned upside down and inside out, even. The most important things, that would stick from this point forward were the dark braided hair, the red coat and general shape of her belts.

![Kyu Iterations 2019.png](https://sophiepf.com/user/pages/blog/meet-kyu/19-06-27-Iterations.png)Another three years later I was wasn't 100% on her design anymore and made a few more iterations, just as general silhouettes this time, before I tightened up two of those. I wasn't decided on wher to give her long sleeves and braces or shorter sleeves yet, but was otherwise satisfied. The more intentional over-the-shoulder braid was born, too, which ended up turning into a nice silhouette shape when drawing profiles of her. (Those are 100% my comfort sketches when I can't be bothered to think of anything to sketch, lol.) But wait, there's more!

![Kyu Chapter 1 Outfit.jpg](https://sophiepf.com/user/pages/blog/meet-kyu/20-07-26%20Kyu%20C1%20Outfit.jpg)I couldn't logically have her at her main outfit right away, I needed something else for the first chapter at the time. This outfit is present in more chapters *now*, however. I came to love it just as much as the above one. While it doesn't afford as many dynamic pose opportunities (I mean, those coat tails do a lot of heavy lifting in that regard!), it feels more down to earth.
There's also a little bit of visual storytelling in that Kyu has hand-me-down clothes at first, they're a bit drab and washed out, if practical and warm. But as she grows in confidence in herself, she graduates to bright colours as well, not feeling the need to hide in a crowd anymore. It's these small touches that I like to hide in plain sight. And they're the reason I opted for an illustrated novel as a medium over having prose alone.

Tags:  [Character Design](https://sophiepf.com/blog/tag:Character%20Design#body-wrapper) [Kyu](https://sophiepf.com/blog/tag:Kyu#body-wrapper) [Art](https://sophiepf.com/blog/tag:Art#body-wrapper)

---

## Navigation

- Parent: [Blog](https://sophiepf.com/blog.md)