Building a Character: The Wicked Queen

I'm not anything like a professional character designer but when creating picture books you do your fair share. Today I'll talk you through the process I used to create the wicked queen for my upcoming Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs ebook.

First there is always a process that goes on in my head. I think about what that character is like and how to express those traits physically. This often takes time but there isn't anything to show. It's all in my head at that point.

After I have an idea I start drawing. These are some of the first drawings I did of the queen. 

They aren't great. The characters are stiff. I was only barely thinking about the overall shape and gesture which are pretty darn important for a great character.  Things I like in these first sketches are the angular face, the flowy sleeve, and some of the other costume elements.

I kept going and here are some of the next sketches.

They are more fun. You can see I did a lot better with shape and gesture. I  also started thinking about how the queen will look when she goes to Snow-white in disguise. In the original story she goes three times in three different disguises. I started looking for a way to say "this is the queen even though it doesn't look like it".

Here is a sketch from the book of the finished character.

I decided to keep it simple and make the necklace the giveaway that we are seeing the queen.

Here she is in two of her disguises.

For more about character design I recommend the Character Design blog.  It's chalk full of artist interviews about designing characters. I've learned a lot from it, and refer back to it often.

Love this art? Buy Prints or Cards and Gifts illustrated by Manelle.

Thumbnail art 2: The actual thumbing part

Yep, you read right. This is another post about thumbnails. But really they are so important in the process. Here are some more thumbnails I did for my Snow-White eBook project.

As you can or maybe can't see these are just small sketches of the same scene over and over. This is the first scene in the book where the queen pricks her finger and wishes for a black red and white baby. (If you don't know what I'm talking about check it out here.)

The boxes with the x are where I plan for text to go in that particular scene. 

I'm still toying with the landscape or portrait question. I like the idea of it being like a movie (the comment Dashbo made last week) but there are also some neat things I can do with the tall format. In this case maybe an opening scene of the tall castle.

But maybe just a scene of the queen will work better. That is what the thumbnails are figuring out for me.

While I'm drawing these here is some of the stuff that is going through my head:
How much of the queen do I need to show?
Will it be better to open with just her? More of the castle, or try to get both?
Why is this one working better than that one?
Doing this book steam punk could be AWESOME!?
How can I do that and keep the fairytale still feeling fairytale-y?
Gees I'm going to have to brush up on my perspective to pull this off.
What kind of window is she by?
Why the heck does she have the window open in the middle of winter... Or is there snow in her house?

Some thoughts are useful. Some are well... not so much.

But, I can also get lame ideas out of my head with these little drawings. As you can see by the first frame with the super boring composition.

 I'll probably keep at this for a bit. Maybe with more than one scene in the book before I make any final decisions about how I'll do this scene. Which way to orient the book and how far steam punk to push it.

What do you guys think? What's the strongest? How do some of you artists work with thumbnails?

Love this art? Buy Prints or Cards and Gifts illustrated by Manelle.

Thumbnail Art

No, I'm not talking about...

Source

I'm talking about...

Thumbnails are tiny drawings artists use to help plan an illustration or book before they get into the nitty gritty. Here are two sets that I made for the Snow-white eBook project (see other art for it here) that I have in the works.

As you can see they are scribble-y,  small, and quick. With these I can see the whole book at a glance and know if one page or a group of pages is going to work. Some of them it might be obvious what is happening in the picture some of them might only make sense to me.

Here I am trying to decide first of all which way I want to orient my book. Landscape or portrait?

After I decide I'll go in and refine a lot of the scribbles until I have compositions for each picture that are awesome (hopefully) and work with the whole story. Then I start on sketches for "real".

What do you guys think should I go with landscape or portrait?




Love this art? Buy Prints or Cards and Gifts illustrated by Manelle.