Little Boy Character

Again, the little boy appears on the same page as the mother, who I have blogged about previously. As I had the little boy drawn for my initial prototype, I decided to have a look back on the drawing to see if there was any changes I could make to improve the character, instead of having to start over. This would mean I could assign time to other parts of the book that are currently lacking.

Colour 

As I am happy with the drawing itself, I noticed that similar to the mother, the colour is slightly odd. I decided to give the boy a more natural look of jeans and a coloured t-shirt. It definitely makes the character look more normal, and doesn’t stand out as much as he did in bright orange trousers!

 

The ‘Mother’ Character

The mother and son characters make their appearance on the page where the stanza ‘When people see Gonzo they get a big fright, his owners think he can protect them at night.’

I had an original drawing of the ‘mother’ figure character in the prototype that I completed in January. I decided to go back and review this character and experiment a bit, in order to get the best result. I am also conscious of where I should be putting most of my time in now, in the lead up to the project submission, and am aware that I don’t want to focus on the wrong things. The mother is only present on one page of the book, however, I do think that small details when illustrating are very important, and focusing on these details can enhance the overall feel of a project.

With this in mind, I went back and began to sketch some different hair styles and facial features that came to mind. I also thought of different clothes ideas. I looked online for different inspiration. The general idea was to just have basic clothes on the woman, nothing that is too ‘stand-outish’! Gonzo will be the focal point of this page.

Inspiration (Simple Clothing)

Sketches 

Illustrating

I firstly went back to my original illustration and looked at what changes could be made. I noticed that my colour choice gave the impression that the mother was in a suit and made her look very business-like. Of course there is no problem with this. However, I don’t want the mother to have a persona at all, I simply want her to bland in to the scene. I made some initial changes to the colour.

After analysing the face, I came to the conclusion that I like the eye shape. However, I am not happy with the face in general , purely from the way the outline was drawn. I went back and fixed this up and made the face look softer.

This re-construction simply made the face softer and the woman to appear younger. I always find it difficult to find a nice blonde colour on illustrator. I also made the change of blonde to brown hair and pulled the hair-line in slightly also, making the woman look younger again.

I am happy with my illustration now. I had originally planned on starting from scratch. However, I always liked the original illustration but it badly needed some adjustments.

The Spider

The spider is a character which appears on the page in the book which has the words ‘Spiders, mice and creatures with wings, Gonzo is scared of all kinds of things.” I chose to draw a spider rather than a mouse of a bird, as I felt that the smaller the animal, the viewer would see Gonzo as a fearful dog. I also thought I could get more creative with a spider as opposed to a mouse.

I initially began to sketch some ideas that came to mind for the character.

I then brought this image into illustrator and drew over my favourite drawing. The drawing below was my initial design. I had always planned on used black for the colour of the spider for the purpose of contrast. However, I decided to experiment with colour also.

To my surprise, I really liked the spider in the grey shade. It wasn’t as harsh on the eye, and after putting some more thought into it, I realised keeping colour in the book is important, considering the age group.

After the addition of some brush strokes and a light bit of shading, I came up with the final design.

Supporting Characters

Finalised Clancy Cat

The final character design for Clancy is made up of different attributes that I designed separately. I am happy with the overall character for the book.

Colouring Clancy Cat

I had some fun messing around with different bright and luminous colours for Clancy. However, grey is the colour that I’ve had in mind from the start for Clancy. I think the colour works well with the character. I tried several different shades for Clancy and made a decision for my final design based on this.

Illustrating Clancy Cat

The next part of the character development for Clancy Cat was to introduce him into Adobe Illustrator and bring him to life. I was happy with how the indivisdual drawings came out. I added shading and used a couple of different brush strokes to get the effect that I was looking for.

Combining Features

The next step for me was just combine all of the separately designed features for Clancy and create one cat. I came up with the sketches below and then proceeded to draw him from three different angles.

Clancy’s Eyes

Cats eyes are an interesting attribute of a cat, that I decided to have some fun and experiment with. With the use of some art and crafts paper and different mediums I assembled some creative eyes that gave me some inspiration for Clancy. I enjoyed this process.

Clancy’s Tail

I aim to portray Clancy Cat as a stray cat who lurks around gardens for prey. To achieve this look I kept in mind that Clancy will have a certain scruffy look about him. Below are some of the tails that I came up with.