DRAWING CHALLENGE : FROG CHARACTER

Another piece from the back log of work is a frog/toad character assignment. This is something I liked the sound of because it gives you the flow of being able to design something organic but also not the same human body. I also liked that the second I read about this assignment I had images exploding in my head ranging from the design of the Hobbs in Fable to characters in books.

I thought the process i used for my last character design (steam punk character) was very efficient and useful so decided to make this my workflow for character design and carry it on into this one, I can tweak this process as I see fit to make it even better in the future.

SOURCE BOARD.

I made this source board first this time, As I would have to change and morph the form and structure of a creature rather than just produce a silhouette of an already existing form (the human body). This board will help me with the shape, structure and texture of the body and limbs, helping me design something that looks anatomically feasible. The sheet will also help me when it comes to colours etc.

ROUGH LINE SKETCH.

The other change I  made to my workflow was producing a rough line sketch first to get the idea of shapes and scale etc. I was expecting to just use this as practice before creating silhouettes however I realized I really liked this shape and design and after scaling the different body parts to fit that it would be a nice design to work with. 

SILHOUETTE.

This is the silhouette I produced from the sketch. I think it shows a strong form but also clearly represents an amphibian type creature.

CLEANER SKETCH.

I produced a slightly cleaner sketch over the top of this silhouette.

CLEANER SKETCH NO SILHOUETTE.

CLEANER SKETCH OVER SILHOUETTE AND BACKGROUND.

After laying the sketch over the inverted silhouette and the background I decided I was happy and started to get to work on cleaning the line work further and adding some flat shading in to define parts of the design.

FLAT SHADED DESIGN.

FLAT SHADED DESIGN OVER BACKGROUND.

I realized there are only three main sections in this design, the body, the teeth and the loin cloth.

FLAT SHADED DESIGN OVER BACKGROUND 2.

On this design I wanted to work on basic shading, I used the burn and dodge tool to create some very basic highlights and shadows.

SHADED FINAL DESIGN.

I was happy with this overall effect and added some skin detail as well to give a more realistic and 3D feel.

FINAL DESIGN COLOUR 1.

FINAL DESIGN COLOUR 2.

I produced two coloured designs over the shading, one with our preconceived ideas of frogs/ toads and the colour scheme, I then looked at my source sheet and used the colours on there and had my second design.