►For the first boy, I wanted to draw someone who would be quirky but still cool. Someone who could be a genius but not look like a nerd. I had recently watched The Amazing Spiderman and Andrew Garfield's Peter was exactly that lol. The messy hair seemed to be the trademark I wanted to go for but drawing AG's hair for this boy was really really difficult for me so I ended up opting out for the hair of Q in Skyfall instead.
I was given some guidelines for his outfit but his top was influenced directly from me, believe it or not! I was about to head outside; it was cold so I had a hoody under my jacket and only the top button was buttoned up at the moment. I sorta paused and examined myself and thought "hm...This could be a cool look for a character..." and that's why this character's top is the way it is lol parted at the bottom hwile secured at the top.

►For the girl, there was only one character that influenced her design. That was Kate Austen from Lost. I had never seen Lost and I was on a 5+ episode-a-night marathon of the show until I burned through all 6 seasons...and I was totally addicted to Kate Austen (until Sawyer grew on me and became my new new favorite character on the show I don't even like Kate anymore LOL). When I got the details for this girl from the client, I immediately thought some physical traits from Kate would work great for her. So her whole look was of that of a pretty girl who was prepared for hike or a long walk. BAM! I made sure to layer her in clothes which is a shared attribute with the first boy's design.
The big problem with the first drawing of her seemed to be her braided ponytail. I kept hearing about Katniss lol. Katniss (and The Hunger Games) was so far in the back of my mind during this process that it hadn't occured to me that there were a ton of similarities. Honestly, the hair I drew was a result of referencing hairstyles of farmgirls. There were mostly braided pigtails in the Google search but that was too country for the character I was drawing so I just gave her the one braid. I was gonna leave the braid behind her but I wanted the client to see the hairstyle I had given her so I drew it slung over the shoulder. But then even he was like "Katniss owns that hair style" lol so a simple ponytail is what I'll go with now!

►For the cool guy, I already knew off the bat what I wanted for him. His outfit was gonna be darker and more fitting than the others. He was meant to be more mobile and athletic. The dark color scheme I had in mind presented a bit of discontinuity when viewed alongside the other two character designs which had at least one bold color present. I was going to give him black hair but decided to go with the most striking, natural hair color in order to relate his design to the other two characters in terms of color. The orange hair allowed me to keep the dark, monochromatic scheme he already had for his outfit without looking too detached from from the other characters.
His outfit is mostly inspired by Han Solo. And his hair is the result of an attempt at Garret Hedlund's hair style (which was also really difficult to understand).

►An amusing tidbit about this whole process is: each character has a physical trait that was intended for another character. The orange hair was intended for the first boy but the client wanted him to have dark hair. Now the second boy has orange hair lol
I intended for the first boy to have freckles but the client had in mind that the girl would have freckles instead.
Han Solo was given as reference to me from the client for the first boy but I ended up referencing Solo for the second boy instead lol.