I’m working on a picturebook book that features a waddle of penguins. In designing the penguins I’m solving for a few problems. I want the penguins to read as characters rather than just representations. Meaning I want them to have some subtly individualistic features. But I also want them to play the role as suggested by the story. Then I have the practical challenge of drawing lots and lots of penguins while keeping the designs consistent.
This is the design for a general penguin.
It came to it by doing a process of first drawing penguins from observation, what Mr. Tom Froese calls O-mode drawing. I do it to gain an understanding of the visual informations that makes up a ‘penguin.
The next step is to draw in I-Mode, this is drawing with imagination, it’s here where I try to bring the more storyful characteristics to the penguin. I do a number of irritations of these too, the final design, is an almagamation of the best features from these iterations.
If you want to experience I-mode and O-mode drawing, we hosted a recent ArtGym where Mr. Tom Froese walked us through the process, you can grab that here.
I turn the final version of the design into a kind of digital cutout.
Every different colour is it’s own layer, here I can do two things, I can alter the shapes to create different poses and characters. Second the process of painting the penguins becomes more strightforward as I’m mainly painting textures into shapes.
When it comes to characters designing the compositor shames that make them up go a long way in enabling you to draw a character over and over again.
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
Draw a character
Pick a subject, a person at a cafe, a bird, an inanimate object.
Break them down into a series of shapes and modify those shapes until you find a character you are satisfied with.
For those of you who want to gig in a little deeper, started a chat where I am sharing the behind the scenes of the picturebook I am making as a perk for paid subscribers, I’ll include my I-Mode and O-Mode drawings there.
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PS: I’m hosting a FREE zoom draw along where I answer questions about the upcoming retreat as well as questions about what I learned becoming a children’s illustrator at 40 sign up here.
Love these suggestions.