Animation Workshop: Initial sketches

I began to sketch for the brief by drawing my own interpretation of Hewlett's style of illustration, I wanted to practice the proportion of the body with the elongated legs. I tried to absorb this proportion when drawing a profile of a character which I felt worked well apart from the arm which needed to be rotated and elongated slightly. I did however like how I drew the legs which worked with the shortness of the torso. I then tried to simplify the style further by lengthening the torso and making the legs slightly shorter however I didn't think that this worked well as the character looked too big for the legs especially with the length of the arms.

I then decided to focus on a possible face for the design which I could develop further along with the body. I tried to use simple shapes for the face instead of my usual sharp and square points to the chin, I found inspiration for these shapes from cartoons such as Steven Universe and Over the Garden Wall. I really enjoyed using different shapes for the head especially the faces that included more of a cheek on the 3/4 poses. At first I found it quite difficult to draw the typical cartoon eyes, even though they look simple, the iris needs to be a certain size or the whole expression appears terrifying through how the eyes look like they are staring instead of a more relaxed gaze. In order to solve this problem I added eye lids however this made the character look tired; the use of the eye lids would work with different expressions to enhance the emotion but not for the usual design of a character unless the personality of the character was to be tired and lethargic.