Here’s the second load of character designs, which includes a new look Panda design and a few new characters. 
Category: Picture Book (page 2 of 3)
Kung Fu Panda. Pandas. Reoccurring theme there but relevant. When watching the Kung Fu Panda movies, the parts that always stand out to me most are the areas concerning backstory due to their specific art styles. They seem to be very abstract and bright which in turn reflects and aids the effectiveness of the story that’s trying to be told.
I really like this style of art. It’s bold, bright, eye catching and effective in aiding a compelling and action packed story. Ideally I’d like to try and incorporate this style into my work.
If I did incorporate this style into the children’s book, I’d need the colours to be brighter and more friendly to the younger reader. It might be an interesting idea to blend the two styles that I’ve spoken about as seeing the bold and bright colours mixed with that of Eric Carle’s techniques might make something intriguing for the reader.
Below are a few designs that I’ve created for my planned characters. I’ve included (In this order): Panda White Fur, Parrot Green Skin, Fish Skin and Tiger Orange Fur. The idea behind these is that I’ll place them underneath each character design and in doing so I’ll be replicating a technique found in Eric Carle’s, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’.
This guy right here is responsible for the artwork inside a childhood favourite among many, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. His art style has grabbed my attention due to the way he appears to overlay the character design on top of the character outline and this I feel is something that I’d like to try. Below are some images/examples of his work.
As well as having an intriguing design to them, each piece of art is very colourful, therefore doing it’s job in attracting the attention of young readers. I particularly like the contrasting colours in each picture, especially with the butterfly picture where due to the nature of the animal there’s a lot of varied colours plastered across it.
From here I’m going to create a few textures/designs that I will place below character designs. One reason why I like this style is because it seems endless, the designs just fall off the outlines and keep going meaning that nothing is restricted.
Some initial sketches of Barry the Panda… Not particularly proud of them but it’s a start I guess.
