Character Design Artist Inspirations

For our first assignment, we were asked to design a character based on ourselves (a sort of self-branding if you can call it that) and use Photoshop to place it into real-life scenes. I have a few ideas already, but first things first---references. Because it shows that you're cultured and you actually bothered.

JAMES GILLEARD

Character design is one of those things were imagination really comes to play---you have to be able to depict behaviours and personalities visually. James Gilleard excels at this---each of his character could be bases for 300-word essays, at least. He excels in facial expressions, as can be seen in his Popeye works. In Pigeons, he manages to paint a personality for each and every bird, giving them human qualities that evokes laughter and interest.

The main points I want to draw from him are his sense of humour, his imagination, and his attention to details (especially in faces).

Check out his Behance portfolio here!

RAYNER ALENCAR

Rayner Alencar is a Brazilian illustrator who currently resides in Australia (at least according to his website's telephone country code... go stalker me). Unlike James Gilleard, who mostly designs (or re-designs) characters for branding campaigns, Alancar specialises in character design. As such, his characters are more vulnerable. You can almost immediately discern the man on the left's personality, from the way his coat flies behind him, or his confident gait, or the arch in his eyebrows. And that is what I want to take from Alencar---his expressiveness, and the way he uses body gestures and comedic facial expressions to convey personalities.

Check out his Behance and website!

NIMRO

A France-based illustrator and character designer, Nimro is probably my favourite out of all the artists I reviewed today. And although my favourite works from him aren't vector-based, he does those too, so it's all good. His works offer a snarky outlook onto pre-existing situations, as can be seen in his Huasca series, which combines South American styles with drug culture. There is an underlying darkness to each illustration, which is right up my alley. The main points I'll be drawing from him are his dark humour, his attention to details, and the ease in which his characters move.

Check out his Behance!

Honourable mention to rifalisme, except that his works aren't really vectors. I think. And now I shall eat some pudding and THEN get cracking on my sketches because I suck at time management.

I need pudding.

#DIGITALIMAGEMANIPULATION #graphicdesign #visualarts