1st session - research for year 2 project

Research document - artist, style

For this year's project, we need to come up with an idea for a character/environment/object and take it through all stages we have been in the previous year.

First one is research into artists that inspire us.
I would like to develop a cartoon character. One of the artists I like is Andrew Hickinbottom. I absolutely love the quirkiness of his characters. They are quite outrageous concepts but so nicely done, that are extremely pleasing to the eye.

Here are some of Andrew's artwork that I would like to take inspiration from:

Another artist that I would like to take inspiration from, is Bruno Hamzagic. I like his caricatures, and the character I would like to design, will probably have this sort of aspect to it. Here are some of his pieces that attracted me:

I have also found this cartoon character by Preston Platt that I think is really nice in its simplicity.

Another drawing style I really like, is traditional, graphite or charcoal. And character I like, is Mavis from Hotel Transilvania, that's why I have chosen this following piece:

I really like the big eyes, the tones used are amazing and in its simplicity, it has a brilliant effect.

I'm also playing with the idea that my character will have a dummy, a super dummy in fact. When taken out, it will unleash the bad side of him/her (not sure of my character will be a girl or a boy yet). So here are some images I have found for unusual dummies.

I also had a look at a few caricature tutorials, as my character will have the caricature feel to it. I have found this one quite interesting: caricature tutorial

... A week has passed by and I am having second thoughts about what my character should be. I am still keen in having a girl, but now I am thinking at having a girl's face onto a toilet seat and animate that, so I could probably make a toilet seat into a character.

At the same time, I would like to take an animal that wasn't used yet in cartoon and give it a more human face and gestures, a human personality. And here I'm thinking: chameleon, hedgehog or kangaroo.

I have experimented with this now and I'm not too happy with the outcome, so I have dropped the idea now.

I have now tried to come up with a cartoon character of my own, and for this I was thinking to use a pear shape. By putting two of them on top of each other, one the right way up and one upside down, I could then create the head and body out of them.

Here are some of my concept sketches.:

...( to be scanned in)

After talking to my tutor, I had some really good feedback and he referred me to a couple of really good illustration websites where I found some extremely interesting work very similar to mine and I can definitely use them for inspiration. 

One of them is Central Illustration agency London : http://www.centralillustration.com/ and the other is: http://www.lemonadeillustration.com/

Another idea was to transform my character by using pixel art. Here is a good tutorial I was shown: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/42648699708/pixel-art-tutorial

I particularly like Lindsay Coils from Lemonade Illustration Agency London. Her work is very similar to what I am trying to produce, and her style is exactly what I am aiming for: cute, cartoon characters, happy faces, aimed at children, warm tones and a warm palette in general for the background as well.

Here is some of her work:

Another artist found on the same website (Lemonade), was Gary Swift.
I quite like the simplicity of his drawings, made to look so expressive. This just shows that you don't need to go in such a detail, as long as you can get the main aspects of a character and transfer it into a drawing. It's amazing what can be achieved with a few lines: