Character designs

So after writing the story out for the last project, I started to think about getting to know my characters.

This was something that came out of my research for this whole unit, you must know and get to know who your characters are.

I started to write down the look of each character first and think about names. So as the fairy was a gardening fairy/angel I thought a floral name would be good. So I came up with Flora!

Now as she loved gardening so much she needed to wear something floral, but practical so I went for dungarees as they are practical, Flora is not scared of getting her hands dirty!

So the dungarees had to have flowers on them. Now colour wise I wanted to try out a few different colours of outfits. At this point I didn’t know whether her outfit would actually be a surface pattern design, so it was all trial and error.

So I came up with: golden curls, green eyes, freckles on nose, tiny, flowery dungarees, white top, pale green wings, nosey, lovable, down to earth, loves animals and nature.

I then went on to sketch her out.

I then moved onto the little boy in the story who was called Rory. Rory was going to have black hair so it contrasted with Floras, as they were the main characters in the book.

Rory was mixed race, quite tall for his age, he was very sensible. He loved to play in the garden, play ball and generally have lots of fun.

I had quite a bit of trouble drawing Rory and getting his proportions right, he always seemed to big, yet he needed to look taller and bigger as Flora was so tiny!

I might change the look of Rory at a later date but working on some outlines gave me the idea of what he would look like in the illustrations, and how he would stand beside flora and interact with her. I worked on Rory on my iPad just so I could erase some of the lines and add more to get him to work. He looks quite old here, but once his face is designed it will look a lot younger, but at the moment he is the one that will change the most over the next few weeks.

I then started to work on Betty bee and the butterfly, who are in the story. I drew them roughly then went over the lines on the iPad to get an outline, I will then design there faces so they become more characterful, and maybe have big eyes.

I then needed to think about the other characters in the book, so a few of Rory’s friends, a few other animals from the other garden, and of course Terrence the tree.

I had already planned Rorys friends and what their names were:

Elsie a little girl who had red hair and glasses, a bit of a sporty girl, always daring her friends to do things!

Thomaz a little boy from Poland who had lovely blond hair, quite quiet, very polite, funny and cheeky.

Jaya a little girl with long shiny black hair, who always had it in a pony tail down her back. Quite bossy, always happy/ positive and loved to have fun.