Character Design: Brave Tin Soldier

As part of my second project I have to produce 3 different character design sheets.

Paper Ballerina

Tin Soldier

Goblin

Brave Tin Soldier

For my second project I decided to set my own brief based around children's illustration. I searched for existing children's stories, preferably looking for lesser known stories by the general public. I came across "The Brave Tin Soldier" originally written by Hans Christian Andersen. It's based around toys and tells a love story between a tin soldier and paper ballerina. 

I set myself a brief listing various criteria I had to meet for this project. 

•Design a book cover for the children’s story “The Brave Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Andersen front and back.
•Research children’s artists
•Make character design sheets for three characters in the story
•Sketch image ideas for 3-4 scenes within the story
•Create 3-4 finalised vignettes from basic sketches 

Below are three different ideas for book cover designs.

Owl

I was watching a friend drawing various human expressions, animal eyes and faces as part of a character design project and decided I'd join in as a bit of practice, the image that interested me most was of a close up of an owls face. Here is my version.

Completed Cover

I searched online and fount a free font called "Hazel Grace", I felt it's scrolling edges and almost etched appearance suited the feel of the story. I added a simple boarder that I felt complimented the typography and a few more autumn leaves to connect the inner image with the exterior.

Little Details, Big Difference

For this cover I wanted to create a snowy scene to one side and autumn scene to the other. combining both of these elements was tricky but using varying opacities throughout the different brush tools I feel I was able to achieve a nice blend between the two seasons.

This project has required me to create my own brushes to add the different winter aspects in my image. The two main brushes I created were "Frost" and "Ice", with these new tools I am able to add ice, frost, fog, mist and snow both on the ground and falling from the sky.  

 

To centralise the image and highlight the focus on "Geraldine" rather than the scenery I added a vignette, this also will make adding font and boarders easier later on in the project. 

Intense Shading

Despite probably being the more complicated design of the three, I chose layout 1 having fall transition into winter in the background with a full body image of "Geraldine".

The brief specifically stated that the author wanted a realistic mouse, similar to the style of
Beatrix Potter. I wanted to try create very realistic looking fur and chose to use an old technique I taught myself a long time ago, using a block base colour to fill the image and then one tone dark and one tone lighter to add shadow and highlights. Using a brush on low opacity meant I could add the different tones in gradually building up the different layers.