Many thoughts filled my mind before attempting to start this assignment. However, after several minutes of deep thought, my character of choice was that of Super Pencil. The assignment required us to create a toon character that would appeal to students between the grades of first through fifth grade. I chose the design of a pencil because of the vital role that education plays on everyones lives in modern society. This is said due to the simple notion that a pencil is a necessity for a student to achieve the required curriculum for any given grade. With this in mind, I made a superhero in the form of a pencil. The pencil is intended to be scaled with a regular life size pencil, as he has an owner that used his in classes. My logic was that, throughout this characters adventures, he would fight crime with what he's learned from school and at the end still have time to get back to his owner so that he too can succeed in school. This idea kills two birds with one stone; not only does it bring the joy and excitement provided by a superhero that children love, but also shows the importance of school.
My initial development of the physical character itself faced many revisions. As shown in my concept art above, I had several different ideas in terms of forms and appearances for Super Pencil, I however settled on the design seen at the very top. The preceding step was then to begin making a full 360 degree profile of my character.
What is seen above is a full 360 degree profile of my character. This was down by first deciding on the final design and then scanning my hand drawing onto Adobe Illustrator. Once that step was completed, I began visualizing a full rotation of my character, this eventually became the Turn Around seen here.
Once a full visual profile was in place, the next step was to create typical movements and expression that Ben (the name of the character) would normally find himself doing (This is known as a model sheet). In order to accomplish this feat, I had to look at myself making the expressions visualized in my head. This was done by looking through a mirror and then replicating the expression on my face in regards to my character via Illustrator. As for the full body shots, they were simply forms I deemed typical of my character when fighting crime.
The last step of the assignment was to create stickers for the toon character I thought up. It is in this phase that I transferred the three poses from the Model Sheet and added the best background I could come up with to each one. I then had to apply a clipping mask over a circular template to create the basis for the actual sticker.
In summation, the process of creating and designing a toon character is more difficult than it seems. One must first create a hand drawing, transfer it to a computer, and open it in Illustrator in order to begin the digital process. Afterwards, one must use the foundation provided by the hand drawings in order to create a final version of the character. Once this is completed, one must then proceed to creating a full visual of the character easily understandable by those viewing it. Afterwards, a model sheet must be created to give people an idea as to how your character will react in situations. To reiterate, the process is much more than a simple stroke on the keyboard.
