Illustrator/graphic artist, Jon Boam, came into the studio and did a workshop with us about character design.
I was taken aback looking through Jon's initial sketches because they were already so neat and well considered. This emphasised to me how different everyone's way of working is because previous illustrators we have spoken to through Big Heads have started their design process very differently with very loose, rough sketches. Even the level of detail in Jon's initial sketches is beyond what I would have considered to be a rough idea. It was like he had poured out his imagination onto paper and there were just endless ideas and routed for development that he could use in his projects.
These were some of my drawing from when we had to illustrate a random verb and noun together, for example, a skipping robot.
We then moved on to some shape based character work where we were trying to make faces or figures out of random shapes. I decided to take forward the face in the green shape and develop this in numerous different ways to see what results I could achieve.
The main thing the exercises today have taught me is that characters can be sparked by the simplest things and often, it is best to keep the form of your character simple so that it can easily be recognised and repeated. Also, you sometimes have to do some silly things to get your ideas flowing.
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