Narrative Illustration Development. Character designs for Ladybird and Spider

Continuing with my character designs I moved on to the character Ladybird. This process went much the same way as the last three characters I have designed. I found Ladybird to be one of the faster characters to draw, the leafy hat came from an early sketch and this feather seemed to fit really well with the character so I kept it. She is also wearing high heal shoes as I feel they fit in well with the design. The colours are mainly what yon would expect for a ladybird character despite the fact I changed her under belly to a sandy colour. Actual ladybirds would have black underbellies but I thought that would look too severe. I found a design that worked in a relatively short space of time.

Spider on the other hand was much more of a challenge. I didn’t want the character to seem threatening as her personalty is rather timed. The first drawing aimed to find an interesting posture for Spider. I was trying to keep the classic Spider look without it looking too frightening. The drawing number 4 seemed to be the best for the character but it still seamed a little scary. On drawings 6 and 8 I toyed with the idea of a bonnet like structure on spiders head. This was then added to the designs as it seemed to fit the character. Now that I had a basic idea of what I wanted, I did a second set of drawings. I felt drawing 2 fit the best and it retained a dainty shy look. For the other two designs I attached a stripey quilt over her back. This is another thing I thought would fit well in the designs. The first idea was to colour it like a rainbow. This helps reinforce the idea that spider is actuallly friendly and wants to make friends, it also suggests that she is trying to hide herself away.

The final two drawings show the finished design for spider. The blue shown on the coloured version is a bit bright but I can tone this down at a later point. I’m happy with the final result although she takes the longest to draw out of all the characters I have designed so far. I have also shown the final design for ladybird.