Northumberland National Park Competition/ Evaluation.

Northumberland National Park. 

Whilst getting on with my animated short, I was also brought the opportunity to work on a character which would be used in signs and adverts for the Northumberland National Park. This competition was soon ending so I chose to take a few days off the animated short and concentrate on creating this piece ready for the deadline. 

The rules of this competition were that the character has to be a young child, possibly between the ages 5 - 10. I went for around the age of about 7 or 8, as the character would most likely be more independent at that age. 

The character also had to look confident and trust-worthy, as well as outdoors-y and rather adventurous. And I took these rules and put them into characteristics of the drawing. One example of this is her stance, she doesn't have too much of a stereotypically feminine posture, other than her feet turning inwards slightly.

Evaluation.

Creating this piece was a small challenge for me, as well as being something I really enjoyed doing! I took into account my last piece and how airbrushed I thought it was, and decided to go against that completely in this piece. I played around with brushes until I found a thick and contrasting brush setting which allowed me to blend and mould colours together rather than blurring them and taking away any texture. I also really enjoyed the fact I was drawing a little girl rather than a grown woman for a change, as this lead me onto research how a child’s bone structure is on their face, as a lot of children’s faces simply LOOK round and actually aren’t. I also feel as though I chose a rather contrasting colour scheme this time, as opposed to my last piece of personal work, and I think, especially on her face, those colours work really well. I'm rather pleased with how this character turned out, as I don't really focus on drawing children and had to take into account almost everything when I was drawing her. Everything from eye shape, to face shape, to teeth, hair ... everything! But I'm pleased she doesn't look too feminine, and hasn't really been assigned a strong gender role, as this makes her approachable by all ages and genders, and won't appeal to one side more than the other. 

When evaluating this piece, I found a few strengths and weaknesses in my work that I should bring to attention: One of my main strengths in this piece was most definitely my colour and shading, as I felt those aspects were a lot stronger this time around, and they worked well together as both an all-round image and in their individual pieces.  One weakness I found with this image is that although it was to be submitted with just a simple white background, I feel as though I could have done more to this version to make her fit in slightly better with the background, either by just adding a shadow around her feet or back just to make her feel a part of the piece. In the future I think I’ll take this point into consideration when thinking that my image is finished when it may well not be! Even if just adding a shadow, or a source of light could make a big difference to the whole outcome.