Character design

I wanted to develop my style from one which was mainly influenced by a western approach rather than a Japanese style. I feel that I have got to the stage where there is not much room to develop if I continue drawing the style I am currently using.

I am heavily influenced by the work of Phil Hale and Jamie Hewlett;

Phil Hale

• A illustrator/painter that creates some work in response to comic books.
• I love his realism approach to his characters that are given depth, a form of life with the use of shading and highlights of the light source in the composition.
• I was influenced by his Constantine design which he made for the Hellblazer comic, the angular jaw and the shading in his face worked really well with the attitude of the character.

Jamie Hewlett

• Hewletts work is very stylised compared to Hales work, the proportions and less realism style works well with the experimental British band Gorillaz.
• I love the variation of line that compliments the shading of the composition.
• I am heavily inspired by Hewletts character design, the amount of creativity and thinking work well with the craziness of both the band and the artist. I love how the elongated proportion works with the clothing and facial features of the characters. For example the character 2-D has no eyes and bright blue hair, the structure of his face however ties these elements together and each compliment the other.

I want to take influence from both of these artists to develop myself as both an animator and a character designer, I began to draw using varying angles and poses, to try and change my style.
I found it hard to draw the character in a 3/4 pose angled towards the right of the frame as I am comfortable drawing to the left of the frame and have become used to drawing to that angle. Drawing to the right made my character look like his head was shorter and lost part of his jaw line. In order to solve this I need to draw characters to the right of the frame and become used to drawing in that format, I think drawing just the head and purposely large will help me get used to it.

I enjoyed trying to change my style to one that is less manga like, which I first attempted by changing the size of the eyes and the form of the nose. I found that I tend to draw eyes bigger than they should which works with the character I would be drawing but it would not link to the western influence that I wanted with my illustrations.