When the lesson ended I was really impressed by some of the Children's characters and asked the teacher if it was possible to have a copy of some of their designs so I could go away and work them into illustrations in my spare time, this way I could then show the class how an idea is developed and also explain how having an idea is probably more important to the creative process than having experience at drawing.
A couple of days later I received a selection of their drawings, I apologies that they are scans of the B+W photocopies, I wish I had their sketch books as they were really colourful! Below are the images that I worked up into designs from their sketches on the right.
This character was really good fun to replicate, I liked how they have drawn the character in an 'action pose' the pet the croc was going off the paper so he's draw it's head tilted up. I think this shows real creativity, in fact I kept the basic pose I liked it that much! Notice also the hearts for the character and the pet, I incorporated these into my version, this was something the pupil added of their own accord.
This Character was produced by one of the girls in the group, I was suprised how involved all the girls got in this project, I assumed the boys would be more interested in designing characters.
I thought this character looked like she was wearing a judo suit so I thought a fighting pose would work nicely, like a character from Tekken for example, I also used the heart shapesfrom the earrings around the design. Her pet is a stripy squirrel which I figured would look great if I made it 100 larger than real life.
This character needed no further explanation even though it's a bizarre combination of blocky robot man and electric eel for a pet! Seeing as I already had the name and looking at the character's shape I thought, why not make him into one big bomb, so there is a counter on his chest!
All in all a really great class with some budding artists among them!
