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!

Colouring Gonzo

I then began to mess around with some colours for Gonzo. Although creating Gonzo with the use of bright greens, blues and oranges, I felt that keeping Gonzo as a brown or grey shade is important.

I also had in my head that I will possibly be developing the character of Clancy cat in a grey shade, so I decided that brown would be the better option.

 

Gonzo’s illustrated angles

The next step was to introduce my sketched angles of Gonzo into Adobe Illustrator and roughly give myself a better idea on how the character would look. This was exciting to do as I felt as though the character was brought to life in a sense from a digital approach.

Gonzo’s sketches angles

The next thing for me to do, once I decided on Gonzos shape, was to capture this shape from different angles that he is bound to appear in throughout the book. I sketched these angles out roughly first and then traced them again onto a fresh page with smooth edges. I then continued to add some shading to his character.

Gonzo – Arts & Crafts

Sometimes getting creative helps me to visualise a character better. With the use of some black and white felt paper, a black pastel and a4 page, I created a silhouette style design of the type of shape I want Gonzo to be.

Combining Features

I combined two of my favourite head shapes with my favourite body shape. I ended up deciding to use most of the original body shape I chose, with changes made to the legs and ears of Gonzo. I did really like the idea of a square head on Gonzo, but I thought there was too much contrast between that and a roundish body, which turned me off the idea.

The ears I decided to go for was one normal sized ear and one much longer one. It adds to the odd shape of Gonzo and I think it also creates a more friendly and goofy feel to the dog.

The changes I made to the legs meant he would look better in drawings from side angles. It also gave him a slightly more realistic look and feel.

Ruby Robin

Although Ruby is not going to be in my prototype, I wanted to begin developing her character as she is of high importance in the book. I started with rough sketching, I showed a couple to my cousin and she didn’t take too well to them, so I decided to take the same approach to the way I drew Gonzo and let my mind run freely.

This resulted in the image of Ruby here below. Ruby will beside Gonzo be extremely small. I drew her face as cute as I could. Like Gonzo, this design isn’t my final decision and plan on making some good changes to her in phase 2 and finalising the design. However, I am confident that I am on to something with this design. I feel that it represents well the Ruby I’ve imagined in my head.

Again, I have put a lot of time into developing this design on Illustrator.

 

Additional prototype characters

As these are not considered characters in my book, I put less time into their designs as I did with Gonzo and Ruby. However, they did take me a couple of days to perfect on Adobe Illustrator. I used the style of illustration that I did with Gonzo and Ruby. I initially drew the little boy and felt that the prototype needed more than just Gonzo and a little boy, so I added in his mother also.

My favourite version of Gonzo

I found that one day, when I took a different sketching approach, I hit upon a Gonzo drawing that I LOVED! I shut down everything I had been previously looking at for character inspiration and just sat with a pen and paper and let it flow naturally.

I ended up with a very messy character that had a very odd shape and then began to experiment on illustrator with different lines, colours and facial features to find one that I felt best suited him. I spent 2 full days getting this character to the exact way I wanted him to be on Illustrator. I realised after this that time management is something I needed to work on in Phase 2 as allocating 2 days to one design under the time bracket I was under, could of been a little silly. However, Gonzo is my main character and creating him exactly how I wanted is very important to me.

I actually only realised afterwards that I may of sought subconscious inspiration for Gonzo from the ‘Chow Chow’. The size of this dog was always  on my mind.