Character Module: Textured Line Work Experimentation

Following my explorations into both textured brushes and children’s illustrations I commonly found this style of illustration being used where there were bold outlines which were made less intrusive through the use of a textured brush and wanted to explore its efficiency within the creation of one of my own characters. I chose to use my young girl for this considering I have not yet explored any digital methods of colouring or creation for them unlike my Nisse character.

I like the way my character turned out considering this felt like the first time I had used these methods to create a completely unique full frontal character design, based on human anatomy. I chose to simplify certain areas to ensure it remained suitable for my chosen target audience, for instance by simplifying the shape of the hands and feet.

I really like the textures used on the actual block areas of colour as I feel this works really well to create the perception of texture, however I am not so sure on the efficiency of the shading. Following my previous explorations within my personal work, I had discovered cell shading worked well in these types of contexts, although here it appears far too harsh in comparison to the light colours and faded textures. Perhaps this could have been improved if I had lowered the opacity further? Although I had used the same brush to complete these areas the detailing becomes lost once they are layered over their lighter counterparts, this will be something to take into consideration during the development of my final colouring choices for this module.

I do however really like how well the shape of my character turned out during this experiment, the nose is cute as a button and the hair has those interesting flicks at the top to create areas of interest for the audience and I really love how friendly they appear. I am keen to keep working on this character as they are because I feel this design works well for the overall ambitions of my project.