Character designs

One of our favourite parts of illustration is designing characters. From coming up with an initial idea for a character to sketching them out in different scenarios and giving them a world to inhabit. When coming up with characters to design, we begin by gathering references, looking closely at facial expressions and getting an overall idea for their personality. We draw our character in lots of different poses. Often we sketch the character over and over again, giving them facial expressions and emotions which helps make them more believable.

When drawing child characters we like to exaggerate their movements. We find that by giving them lots of movement enhances the personality of the character and gives a playful feel to our work. When adding colour to our characters we try to keep in mind the original sketches, so as not to loose the original playfulness and spontaneity of the sketch.

Printable paper masks

We have designed some playful animal masks to cut out and colour in. You can download them by clicking on the masks bellow. There is a fantastic fox mask with a crown and a little finger puppet for you to cut out and colour. These is also a wise owl mask with fancy glasses. To download simply click on the image then right click again and select download. Print them out and have fun colouring in the masks. Then cut them out and hole punch either side of the mask and thread a piece of sting through each hole so that it stays in place on your head. These masks are for personal use only and not for re-sale.

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Fabulous Fox mask with finger puppet, crown and speech bubble.

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Wise Owl mask with funky glasses, cut out feathers and ‘Hoot’ speech bubble.

Creating playful scenes

When coming up with ideas for illustrations for book ideas, we often sketch rough ideas of what the characters look like, what they are doing, the environment the book is set and the world they inhabit. We come up with lots of designs. Often our sketches are quite unrefined at this stage, scribbling down lots of ideas for scenes and characters. Later we start to think about layout and perspective and creating an intriguing atmosphere.

We love to experiment with creating intriguing and playful environments, thinking about if its a cold or hot enviroment, what season is it set in, is it night time, who lives there. We also like to think about what colours we want to use. Sometimes its a lot of bright colours, like greens and oranges and yellows, to create a really vibrant scene, full of life. Other times we use just one or two colours, like blues and greys, to create a cold wintery environment.

Little brother and sister sitting in their bedroom

Sketchbook

One of our favourite things about illustration is creating and drawing characters. We reference from lots of different photos and practice drawing different poses and facial expressions. We love giving our characters different personalties and making them come to life.

We experiment with adding colours to the characters clothing, using only a few colours gives our characters a nice feel. We use simple line work to create detail and texture, especially in the hair and on the clothing.

3D Illustrations

We are currently making a range of 3D paper sculptures and puppets based on our illustrations. We use coloured paper, and pattens paper to create our designs. We plan out the design in 2D form first and then covert it into a 3D form starting with the basic shape and adding more detailed elements from there.

We reference from real life and photographs to make our paper objects as life like as possible, experimenting with different textured and patterned papers to create areas of interest. Recently we have designed a set of paper fruit, cakes and bakes. We like the objects to have a tactile feel so we play with using beads, buttons and shinny embossed paper to give them texture.

We have also created a set of paper objects that are interactive. The paper suitcase comes with a paper passport, hat, clothing and mini paper luggage tags that can all be stored with the different compartments of the suitcase. We enjoy creating paper objects and sculptures that are beautifully presented as well as playful and fun to explore.

How we design and make our character paper puppets

Often when we design characters for children’s books, we come up with little extra designs for paper toys, activity sheets and paper puppets. We base the puppets and toys on characters that we have designed and think of ways we can make them engaging and interactive.

One of our favourite things to make are paper puppets. We draw our characters out a few times on paper and pick a character that we think would work well as a puppet with movable arms and legs. We draw the full character out on to some paper and then we trace the arms, legs and body separately onto some card. To add colour to our character we usually use coloured pencils and collage. We then cut the body, arms and legs of our character out. We make holes in the top off the legs and arms and attach split pins to the body.

Below is an activity page for children to make their own finger puppets. We use collage on the characters to make them more intriguing and playful. We also create activity pages for children to create their own animal masks, party packs and 3D paper objects.