Ruby – Finalised Character

Rubys character is a mix of the individually drawn features created for her. I used a slick stroke along her outline and added some light shading around her, which will change in each scene depending on her place on each page.

Ruby – Combing Features

I like the idea of having an ‘S’ style design to Ruby Robin, that makes the illustration flow. I sketched Ruby robin, according to all of the individual sketches I created separately. I chose my favourite attributes about her, such as wings, beak, legs, eyes etc..

Ruby’s Wings

The wings that came to mind while sketching were quite delicate and elegant in their flow. I enjoyed using different strokes while illustrating.

Ruby’s Legs/Feet

Some funny designs came to mind for the character of Ruby. I wanted to be creative and make the legs different to the typical ones used in common cartoons. Again, I drew out ideas first and dragged them into Adobe Illustrator where I brought them to life.

 

Ruby’s Beak

For designing the beak of Ruby, I followed the same process of sketch to illustration. I took inspiration for beaks from different bird cartoons that came to mind from my childhood and combined different ideas with these. Again, I selected my favourite few to illustrate and played around with some different strokes in illustrator also.

Ruby’s Eyes

As Ruby is the prominent female character, I wanted to give her some noticeable female attributes. I done this through the addition of long eyelashes in the experimentation of the eyes. I enjoyed this process as I felt I could just loosen up and draw any type of eye that came to mind, some of which i realised after seemed to of come from anime style eyes!

I then proceeded to draw over my favourite drawings in Adobe Illustrator where I found some eyes came to life more than others! It was interesting to narrow them down in this way.

Ruby’s Body-Shapes

I originally began drawing Ruby.s body in a rounded styles. I want Ruby to come across to the reader as friendly and nice as possible. However, I want to also create the impression that Ruby is brave and confident and will always stand up for herself and her friends. I do not want to make her look too playful and naive either.

Underneath are some of the initial sketches I completed, before I broke down the character into more specific parts.

Ruby – Breakdown of Features

I know that I need to experiment more with Ruby a lot before making my final decision. I broke down the attributes that make up Ruby and decided to focus individually on these features and then pick on my favourite ones at the end of my experimentation.

• Body Shape
• Eyes
• Beak
• Feet
• Wings
• Colour

Gonzo – Finalised Character

The finalised character of Gonzo that I have chosen is similar to the original style that I came up with. However, going back and breaking down Gonzo’s features, allowed me make changes that benefited the character and add something extra.

The main changes made were the addition of the front legs, making it easier for me to draw Gonzo from side angles, the ears, where I added an extended left ear of the character, and the introduction of a tail, making it more realistic and adding to the character. I also made Gonzo a couple of shades lighter, after experimenting with different browns.

 

Gonzo Food Inspiration

Messing around with different ideas led me to taking inspiration from different foods for my main character. I initially made the observation that Gonzo’s chosen body shape resembled an onion, which gave me the idea to illustrate an onion-styled Gonzo in Adobe Illustrator. Again, this gave me more opportunity to mess around with colour ideas.

 

I then continued to represent Gonzo as different fruits, purely for experimentation and visualisation reasons!