Looking for character critiques
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I’ve been working on this character illustration and am trying to figure out if there’s anything I should change. I’ll be adding a background element as well but I want to get the character nailed down first since I’ll likely have it printed on stickers at some point. All feedback is welcome.
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Well done! Looks he is pretty sad
Do you have any background of this character? like personality or story setup, so that we get to know a bit more of him/her and see if your design is spot on
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It’s a very cute character
The expression is conveyed nicely, I read it as: ‘disappointed that he/she can’t rollerskate without falling down constantly’Design-wise I am curious what the character’s feet look like because those skates look like they belong on a human. I would like to know more about the character and the story you are telling with the image because for all I know they are human skates and that’s why there is a struggle?!
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just a small thing but I noticed that I find the right side of his face gets rather lost/ or seems to merge with the skate being it and somehow this area is distracting for me - so I thought maybe a bit of a thicker outline for his face on this side would be good, so you can read his expression better. (or maybe a bit of a shadow on the shoe would be another option)
I love the pose and frustration a lot on this piece! the emotion is super strong
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@idid I'm still pretty new to SVS. I haven't made it to any of the background courses yet. I'm just really focused on character right now. My wife and I have talked about potentially making this into a book at some point about all of the other young dinosaurs being so good at different activities but this little one is really struggling to find something they're good at. Ending in a lesson about the importance of practice.
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@Lovsey Thanks for the feedback. That's exactly the way I was hoping it read. The feet were something I struggled with for a long time for that same reason you mentioned. When I made the skates in the round shape of triceratops feet they weren't reading very well. In the end, I just took regular skates and shortened them as much as I could until it started looking weird. It really helped with aging my character down because the shoes started looking more like stubby baby shoes.
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@Freya-Chakour Thank you so much for this feedback. A combination of those two tips really helped a lot in pulling the face forward!
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Hi @jaredhdesign, it’s a cute character!
Here are a few things I noticed, but please feel free to ignore.
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The skates are throwing me off; I think it’s the angle. The back leg is flush against the body but the skate is turned out, which makes it feel off since the skate is closer to the viewer but the hind leg is farther back.
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The front skate also has a pasted feel because you can’t see the front leg thickness. It’s like the front leg blends in with the body.
I like how you added the shadows and texture, and definitely like how you rendered the skates!
Nice work!
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@jaredhdesign It’s great that you have worked through a few designs in your problem solving
I can absolutely see how triceratops-shaped skates could look infantile haha. What you have works pretty well but I think it’s more successful on the back skate than the front one and that’s possibly because of what Jeremy is saying in his 2nd point about the front leg looking flat, a skinnier leg looks more human and proportionally elongates the toe of the skate.
Another option is an open-toe strap on style skate that shows most of the character’s actual feet (if you know what I mean?). I think I’ve seen that style of skate used before on the turtle character Franklin illustrated by Brenda Clark, which actually could be a good reference for your character as they have similar limbs.. If you look at the cover for “Franklin’s Bad Day” you can see how human style boots have been shaped to work on a reptilian foot - nice and wide around the leg.I would also be curious to see more of a true 3/4 angle on this pose to see if it tells the story even better with more of the expression revealed and different angles on the limbs/skates. The small changes to the face look great by the way and I love your colour combination and rendering style!
