Creating the final character - mom

In this post I will show my work process on creating the final version of the mom's character, choosing the color palette and drawing it in Procreate. If I have enough time, when all my characters are done, I will create a gif of each of the characters and the gif for the mom would be her moving her hand with the brush because she is a painter, however as of right now, I created only the still version of her. 

At first I needed to decide, which sketch I wanted to base my final piece on. I have already picked my favorite sketch of the mom and it is this sketch. 

As I said in my sketch post, I think it is a fun and friendly character and that it looks great for the mom. What I needed to change were the feet and I also wanted to give a little bit more shape to the body, so it is not a ball, because it is a woman. What I also thought about while thinking about this particular design is what sensation I want the people to get from this character and I was thinking of sweetness. Since the character is already based on circles, I decided to make her in a way that a person would feel sweetness of a blueberry. A blueberry was my inspiration for this particular piece. 

Next what I needed to think about was the color palette. I have already done an experimentation task where I would base this character on only complementary colors, however I thought the contrast was too big and I did not quite like it. I decided to take a look at split complementary colors. I looked at this color wheel.

Color wheel

I picked a very light purple from this wheel and looked at what color is exactly opposite of this color. Then I circled the colors right next to that color to get the split complementary colors I decided to use. 

These are the main colors I chose for my design. I used the lightest purple, because I did not want to make the mom 'heavy' with the color, because since she is already a chubby character, making her in dark colors would only make her seem heavier. I think especially since I am thinking of a blueberry, it needs to be really light to create that sweetness I am looking for. I quickly realized that those 3 colors are not enough for the full design, because I did not want to constantly repeat the colors, therefore I added one more shade of purple - a darker one and very light orange for the crown and the art equipment. 

The software I am using is called Procreate and I have already used it multiple times in the past, so I did not have to spend a lot of time learning the software and its options. When tracing the character in Procreate, I have noticed a few mistakes I have done while sketching and I am really happy with myself that I noticed them, that shows that I was not just tracing the character, but I was really thinking about it and about the design. 

This is the first mistake I spotted. This is called a tangent point and when creating characters it is important to avoid those tangent points, because they tend to draw attention to themselves. When I have a viewer seeing my work, I want them to see my character as a whole, not pay attention to one detail like this one. To solve this problem I just simply had to move the hand a little bit up or a little bit down, so it was not a very complicated or difficult solution. 

This another mistake I noticed is another tangent point, but here it is in a different way. In character design it is important to avoid points like this one, because it looks like the hair is simply glued to the back of the character and if it is, it should stay this way in all scenes with this character and obviously the hair is not glued. To get rid of that illusion, I needed to place the hair a little bit higher or a little bit lower. It is another very simple solution to a problem. It is just important to see the mistake and know why it is a mistake and why it should not stay this way. 

For the creation of this piece I used a few different brushes in Procreate: for sketching - Peppermint brush, for outline - Script brush and for coloring - Syrup brush. 

Here is a video that shows the full process of my drawing:

This is a time-lapse video that was created by the Procreate app, it shows exactly what steps I have taken to achieve my final outcome. 

This is my final outcome:

This is the finished character, but I do realize it seems like she is floating in the middle of nowhere and it is important to give her any sort of background, even a simple horizon line, so she has the ground to stand on. I am definitely going to give her something behind, for now it is just the character. 

I am very happy with this character. She definitely makes me think of a very creative and friendly person. I can think of a blueberry when looking at her and I am very proud of that. I am generally happy with this design. 

The next thing I needed to do was think of a name. As I decided in my 'Chowder' research, I wanted to give this character a name that would have some connection with art. I thought of a different female painters and the most popular are Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo or Mary Cassatt. I do not think that any of those first names are very distinguishable, I mean I could name her Frida, but I am not sure if anyone would catch that it is a reference to Frida Kahlo. I decided to look at art equipment and think about a name referencing something she could paint with. I would not name my character 'brush' or 'palette' but I decided to go more into paints and I thought about how watercolor paint in Polish is called akwarela, I am sure that no one would be able to pronounce that, so I decided to look if it is similar in any other languages and it sounds pleasing. I looked into the Spanish translation and it is acuarela which I think could be a beautiful name for a painter. 

I think I am pretty much set on this name meaning watercolor - Acuarela.