Mixed media frog character design

                                    Traditional linocutting—cut away the non-image area.

The final image will appear in reverse.  

                                            Recreate the image in software with digital tablet. 

Original sketches of layout design

Sketching Tropical plants in botanical garden

I sketched some tropical plants and trees in Birmingham botanical garden, in order to be familiar with the rain forest environment for my illustration design. The painting tools I have used are color pencils and mark pens. 

The research of forest environment design

I got some inspirations by watching Henri Rousseau‘s art works. His unique genre could give audience a deep impression and the detailed descriptions of rain forest environment will attract the readers to get more information from his pictures.

The final outcomes of frog character design

Here I offered a range of visual outcomes of my frog character design, which is for the age group from 4 to 7 year-old children. The reason why I created the frog character being big head and big eyes is in order to make sure the character looks cute and let the young audience want to hug it. The following are the examples of character turnarounds, character action pose and facial expressions in different situation. I set up as much of these concepts as possible, in order to be familiar with my character and ensure that every concepts looks like the same character.

Visual concepts for frog character design

 I have developed some visual concepts for the frog character design. According to the criteria, the frog character needs to be anthropomorphic, friendly, lovely, funny, and a little bit dull.

The research of frog character design

Here is the first stage of character development—collect some visual references and get some principles and criteria for frog character design. I have got some helpful knowledge from this research.

Mixed media illustration

Currently, I’m exploring mixed media could be used in illustration. There are the first time visual concepts of my project. I tried to combine the traditional mono print with digital tablet as well as collage in my recent works. Even though I’m not very satisfied about the outcomes, it is really a great approach to set up the creative thinking strategies in this process.

Testing new media

Here I used tablet mixed with the collage to decorate the image and below shows the original sketch.

Daily Sketch