Narrative Illustration Development. Character designs for Centipede and Grasshopper

Now I have reached the stage of character design where I wish to begin designing my insect characters. I have already designed James so that I have a guide line for the insect’s style. The research from earlier has helped give me a greater understanding of how the characters work and will translate into the final designs.

The first bug character I attempted was Centipede. He needed a good stand out design as he was the most expressive and loud mouthed of the bugs. The first couple of sketchers are where I was trying to get a feel of the characters shape. I wanted him to stand up straight and use lots of legs to provide stability. The character is described as wearing lots of boots. Quit quickly I realised that this would be very time intensive to draw. To combat this I experimented with drawing small fully shaded feet, this is much easier to draw and will save a lot of time when drawing this character. 

The three drawings to the right show how I began getting toward the design I wanted. I particularly liked the face and jacket on the second sketch. Drawing three was heading away from what I imagined but I found the more insectoid legs to be appropriate for the character.

As I couldn’t decide on a design for the arm of the character, I draw five different interpretations. I chose arm design number one for Centipede, It was not too over the top and I enjoyed how much excretion I could draw with this design. I did a similar drawing with different face designs. A lot of the designs worked for the character but five seemed to work the best for Centipede. 

Shortly after finishing centipede I began work on Old Green Grasshopper. This time I felt that I had a better idea for the character as I had already designed two. The first step consisted mainly of sketches. The aim was to find a profile which worked with the character. I tried to use parts from actual grasshoppers and personify them while designing. This include the wings and the back shall. 

The upright posture seemed to be the best way forward but the unusual structure of the grasshoppers legs proved challenging. I also had to draw some more head designs as I found the grasshoppers face hard to imagine. From the list I chose design five as I think it looks the friendliest, also the glasses fit well with the design.

Once I was happy with These sketches I combined the parts that worked we  together for the final designs. These were given colour washes, although I will probably change this in the future.