Context and Research
For this project I've decided to continue working with my friend and create a more complex character called Gain. This character is a young child who is a changling and uses they/them pronouns.
DESCRIPTION: they had badgers feet, ducks legs, mortal body, a cats nose and Bris dreadlocks in the same colour as Ulrics hair. Every step the child took left a small trail of moss peaking through the cobbles.... morphing into their usual green skinned, genderless form.
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This character is going to be a new exciting challenge as not only do I have to learn how to draw children and more animals, I also get to play around with their features as they can shapeshift making it fun to play around with proportions and drawing mid transforming scenes too. For this project I will be mainly be focusing on this one specific character as this is going to be very difficult. I might try a new style for this character and rather than cartoon style I will look into "chibi style" as its very rounded shapes and big eyed. However, I will mostly keep to my graphic style if I don't like that style as I'm comfortable with that style. For this term I will stick to paper and pencil, possibly experiment with ProCreate or move onto PhotoShop once I've finalised the design for the character. I will stick to a green palette for the changlings usual form but when they're shapeshifting I will stick to more dull colours for the description above and maybe have fun with other shifts and go for bold and bright colours.
These are some images I found which I think would be good to help with proportions of children. The character I'm drawing this project is between 5-500 years old but looks like an 8/9 year old so I will also be using my younger brother (age 10) as inspiration. Some of these images are a different style to what im used to as i want to try a new style of drawing to see how it feels.
These are the palettes Gain will be inspired by. I wont be using these exact colours as I would like to try and mix them the get the exact colour I want. I've picked a lot of green palettes as Gain is Green so feel that no matter how they transform they will have an aspect of green, whether it's their natural hair colour or skin tone, something will be green. I like some of these greens but none of them stand put to me so I will definitely mix these to create the perfect green.
In the scene given to me by my friend, Gain transforms into a ducks body with badgers feet and a cats nose, because of this I've found these specific images so I have a better idea of how to draw the different aspects of the animal.
Boy George is going to be a big inspiration for this character as his style has always been very androgynous and stands out and I want Gain to stand out amongst the crowd as they are very different.
I've always love Boy Georges alternative style and wacky colours in his outfits. As Gains Mum (Lynne) wears a lot of bright colours I want to incorporate that into Gains outfit So will continue to use Boy George as inspiration for this.
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I'm not sure which outfit will inspire Gains look or if it will however the mix of colours that would otherwise clash look really nice together and i think would show off Gains fun personality more.
Client Discussion:
I met up with my friend for a catch up and we ended talking about her book and my drawings and I found out that she had altered the story slightly to match the drawings I had done for her. The reason she did this was because not only was she inspired by my drawings the story hasn't reached the final draft so its easier for her to change the story slightly currently.
She also told me more about the story as a whole. As it hasn't reached the final draft I haven't been able to read the whole book so I've been sent portions of the story and been given the run down but she also told me more about the characters backstories. However she didn't want to spoil the book to much so only told me about the 5 characters I know about.
Gain as we know is a changling fae creature. However, my friend has taken myths/conspiracies and altered them slightly. Gain is aged somewhere between 5-500 because faes age backwards in a way. They have more memories from recently than a couple years ago as well so Gain doesn't know their birth parents, age or where they're from. However, they know the people in their life right now. Also, Gain is very rare kind for a fae, faes have to imprint on a child to take a permanent form, age properly and retain memories and Gain never has. Hense the shapeshifting and bad memory.