Character Design Module: Personal Development Illustration

I am really happy with the direction I took for this project however I was still really interested in creating a ’scary’ version of my concept as I really wanted to see the types of visuals which would change, and it was dramatic! Although I used the same room and theme almost everything looks different except the furniture I chose to incorporate. My lighting is a lot cooler in this version and quite obviously the Nisse is now a lot creepier with over-extending limbs and sharp teeth hiding just out of view.

Considering the change in context I decided to use an image of myself as reference for the girl character, rather than my oversimplified child’s version as I felt this would be much more appropriate. I was loosely inspired by the work of Jamie Hewlett’s, 2D who has bags under their eyes however I wanted to make this even creepier by having the girl with no pupils and shading on both the inside and outside of her eyes to create the perception of depth within the sockets. I felt by having a strange appearance on the girl, it makes you think what could they possibly be scared of? Whilst also remaining visually interesting and on theme.

I was also inspired by my research into the book ‘Behind You’ for both my composition and colour scheme. I originally created this design using the same colour palette as my child-like version and altered layers above to create the cool lighting so the tonal values would appear accurate. I loved the page where there is a monster hiding behind the sofa only in view of the young girl visiting their grandma, and was heavily inspired during this project to explore a similar composition of having the creature just out of view. I am very happy with the results and really like how this illustration turned out. I feel if I were to create an older targeted audience for this book, I would definitely like to utilise this style.

Although the Nisse is technically ‘out of view’ I still wanted them to remain visible to the audience, however I wanted the creature to be the second point of focus after the young girl. This was because I felt this illustration looked moderately normal and the first point of focus is the detailed shading of the girls hoody. However, to ensure the character wasn’t overlooked I worked on my lighting to create a ‘halo’ of sorts around the creature which helped lead the eye of the audience without being too drastic to the composition. I feel I could definitely improve upon this if I were to return to this design in the future to make the creature more noticeable, however due to the deadline of my project I needed to hand it in as it was. This won’t stop me improving upon this in the future though, so I am glad I explored these techniques and methods.