Here’s a series of development drawings for a character in Island Book!

The first illustration is a sort of first-presentable-pass on the character. From there, I did a lot of drawing to develop his look and the look of the setting to which he pertains, focused particularly on simple shapes and clear repeating motifs– I’ve tried to keep a lot of the design work in Island Book simple and ‘crystallized’ in this way, and it builds an overall visual texture that I like. The last drawing is what he looks like to me ideally, before I go into drawing him in the comic itself– But inevitably the process of applying this design to the narrative itself (having it act and occupy space with the other characters, etc) will apply further pressures to it and change it a little more. So I generally go back and do some reworking for consistency before I ink a sequence of the book.

maybe that is interesting!! this project is making me look at my process in different ways.