Build a Character in Illustrator

Learning Intention: Explore characters and drawings by other people and collect some ideas for what you might like to do for your character
Success Criteria: Collect at least 3 images of work created by others that you like and record what you like about it

Inspiration

To get started we will investigate works that have already been created. You may have some ideas already of great characters from movies or cartoons that you really like. You can use these as a reference point but also we want to look wider than that and explore more ways we can make a character.

A great tool for doing this is Pintrest, and I have spent some time collating some character drawings already that can be found at this link:

https://www.pinterest.com.au/laurenRmartyn/character-design/

Ideally you want to explore 3 or more artists and look at some of the ways they have used materials, the art elements and what topic, story or feeling they are communicating. You don’t have to use only the ones on this page, you can find your inspiration anywhere.

What am I looking for?

We are looking for things that we really like, that we connect with and that we want to know more about. You will be making a character yourself in the next few weeks so now is the time to have a look at others works and see what you might do. Here is an example of things you might identify in an image.

This is an image called ‘Little Lady’ by a 2D game artist called Ovopack. I really like the attitude of this character and the regal way it sits on it’s perch. The colour scheme is also muted and gives it a sense of softness, although it does have claws! I’m sure it was completed in a digital program and has some lovely graduations of colour. This is a really cute character, but I think she could look after herself too. The artist has outlined the work, the colour is soft and muted, the shapes are shaded but there is no texture. The drawing fills up the page and uses all the space giving us multiple views.

Here’s another one that I really like also. It’s a great idea to put the link to where you found the works and note down the artist when you can. You never know, you might really want to come back to it later on.

This is by topvisit.net I’m thinking I would like to do an animal based character and really like these images that combine vegetables and animals, this one has a theme of winter. I love the cabbage and the bunny. These are cute, the colours are really good and they look a bit like cutouts done with little pieces of paper and also spray painting. Likely is done with a digital program. These characters are really beautiful and the unusual approach to the textures really makes them stand out. They don’t have really strong personalities but they do have something about them. This work is not outlined in each character, the colour is really vivid, the shape is anatomically correct, texture is created by variations in the look of paper, brush strokes, shapes.

This is a drawing by Tim Burton of Jack Skellingham, I really like the emotion in this drawing and the pose that tells us exactly what he is thinking. It makes me think about how I can pose my character and also how that I really want to communicate emotion. I love that this is done in what looks like ball point pen. ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’ is one of my all time favourite movies. This work uses line in almost a silhouette, the shape is really elongated and unreal, and it’s a magical character, not much variation in the types of marks, but very expressive.

So see what you can find! Print out the images and add them to your visual diary or put them in a word doc and share all the things you really like and what you would like to explore.