Postcard Designs

I decided to look at making postcards as I still wanted to portray my characters whilst adding some environmental art to the scene. My main focus was making my characters link with their personalities even more and also adding the fact that they each have different powers, which also was meant to link back to their personalities.


First I began by doing some secondary research by looking at different designs that I was inspired by. I found this image from pinterest and I was instantly inspired due to the colour scheme. I saw how each character had a specific colour scheme, representing their tattoos and their personality through the use of colour and emotions seen through their facial expressions, e.g which the character at the bottom, her colour scheme is yellow and green, representing happiness due to the extent of yellow used in the artwork, whereas with the character in the middle, she has a anxious facial expression, linking with the colour blue representing sadness. I was inspired by this and knew that i could link this with my work in the same way to make it more eye-catching and have actual meaning instead of just having random designs that don't even work or link with the characters personalities. 
I also liked the layout of the design as I like the close up of the characters, allowing us to focus more on the character whilst being drowned in with the colour in the background, keeping us involved with the artwork which was a very smart move that the artist made. As I wanted my characters to be the main focus, it would make sense to do close up designs of them however I was still keeping my options open.

I stumbled upon these amazing postcards called 'Line Friends' on Google, and was instantly drawn in with the unique artwork and how vibrant the colours were. I'm really envious of artists that are able to pull of such colours as they have a deep understanding of colour theory and how to make different colours work together, which can be seem through the artworks on the postcards. the colours are truly intriguing, warm and helps bring the artwork to life. i also like the line dependency as there are hardly any line art seem in the artworks as the colours and shapes help show the characters and the environment. 

For the environmental art, i knew I needed reference for that, so I decided to go outside and take my own photos of nature. It was very calming, taking pictures of all the different plants and trees I saw, I was very intrigued by the vibrant colours i was getting due to it being a nice hot day when i took the photos.

After doing research I began sketching out ideas for my postcards. I started of by drawing lot's of thumbnail sketches to get all the ideas in my head out and i really wanted to do really well with these postcards as I was creating 4 postcards so I would be able to add detail. After all the thumbnail sketches, i chose one idea and expanded upon it. I started off by drawing different expressions of Paul, to get the right feel and emotion that I wanted to portray with his postcard. It was actually fun doing these quick expressive sketches as It allowed me to loosen up and simply sketch out ideas as before with the character designs, the sketches I did were still aimed on trying to look perfect and neat, which is what i shouldn't have been focusing on.

Afterwords, I chose the one that I liked the most and drew the layout of how I was going to form out the postcard design with a more detailed sketch of Paul and his environment. I then decided on what the colour scheme  would be like to help connote his personality. Now it was getting to the fun but long part of actually making the design. My initial idea from my thumbnail changed whilst making Pauls postcard for which is why in my sketchbook, the development is for the final outcome as I went back to change on how i wanted it to be laid out.

During the process of my design, i began by doing a sketch of the design on Photoshop using my wacom tablet to do all the drawings that I have done digitally. After I would lower the opacity, creating a new layer and drawing ontop of the sketch layer, where I would do the finished lineart of the drawing. However due to the lineart curse, when I closed the sketch layer to see the lineart layer by itself, it looked terrible so I then decided to use the sketch drawing as the final drawing and continued rendering it to look more solid and clean .Then it came to colouring which I was excited about as I got to finally make my artwork pop out even more. I focused on getting the block colours before i added in effects. Once I was happy I moved onto adding the effects and I mainly used the 'Overlay' effect to create the bright vibrant colours seen on Pauls face and the plants I drew. I was very pleased with the way it was all coming out as the colours all worked well together and the designs were looking crisp and clean. 

I simply used the same development process for the rest of my characters, bringing the characters to life by portraying their powers and personalities. Paul has the power to create anything he touches, Esther has super strength, Emily can fly and Mikhaela has the ability to shoot blue lasers from her eyes. I was extremely satisfied with the final outcomes of my postcards however due to my terrible time management, I wasn't able to make my short comic in time.