A few character studies

Hi everyone! I have to apologize for not posting and commenting earlier. This is such a great idea and a great exercise, but I have been a bit overwhelmed with some other things and have not been able to dedicate myself to giving life to these characters.

One thing I learned already: keeping proportions is hard! The characters worked really nicely on that one illustration, but when I try to sketch them in different poses (and I had done a few a while back for IF) the proportions were not right. That's where I tend to lose the consistency...

I'll be sure to visit everyone's posts and comment. Sorry if I don't finish this project. In about a week, I'm going to Brazil to visit my family, and I still feel I have so much to do!

doodles for the storyboard and double colour pages

so 'cricket the superhero' story is continuing :) i'm working on a tale with autumnal colours and my cricket-character whom you can see at my earlier post.

here's some doodles from the storyboard:



and double pages from a work in progress book:

Expressions

While we are working on character sketches I thought I would make a note about this reference. In his book MAKING COMICS Scott McCloud has a wonderful section about expressions. He talks about the muscles of the face and how they create expressions, and then he has a reference page of expressions and combinations of expressions. Because he does comics each of these expressions is created with the simplest number of lines and has been very helpful to me in terms of figuring out how to create an expression quickly.

Cricket's faces

some of you could see this cricket on my blog - i'm going to work on my own tale with him and a little chestnut. here's some sketches about cricket. i think the first step is to find a new special character. more drawings coming soon! have a shiny, creative week everyone! :)

Character sheet

I'm actually working right now on a series of new characters for Forget-Me-Not-Tots, LLC, but I don't believe I can share them online while they're in "production."

Instead I think I'll do some studies based on an illustration I did for Illustration Friday some time ago, and that I really, really like. I'd like to develop the characters a bit more, especially the little boy and the dog at first, so I'll be pasting some pencil studies soon.

Because I also have a full-time job, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to accomplish in terms of final illustrations, but I'll definitely try. If not, at least I hope to get some real good practice playing with these characters.