My Draft Background - Bamboo Forest

Here is the home and T-stage for my Fashionable Panda Lady!

I drew one bamboo, and made several copies. Then I rotated them a little bit, modified the shapes, applied different colors and gradient effects onto them to create the unity and variety principles in my design.

I only had one bamboo leaf though. I will use some technique to generate more leaves from the one that i have drawn at the next class. That will save me a lot of time!

My Draft Fashionable Panda Lady

Please welcome my Fashionable Panda Lady and her two baby pandas! Originally, I only designed the Panda Lady as my sole character, then I decided to add two supporting characters which are the two cute panda babies based on the two following reasons.

1. Visual effect wise: It will be better to have some black and white colors in the background to co-ordinate with my main character's colors. Otherwise, my background will be too heavy with the green color.

2. Reality wise: I would like to push my main character closer to the real life. The Panda Lady loves fashion and has career goals on fashion, but she also has to take care of her babies. How to find the balancing point between her career and her life will give my character more room for the storyline. My character is not only a figure on the screen, but also a vivid life in the reality!

Supporting Characters in My Background Scene

I would like to create some supporting characters that are thematically linked to my character. It will be a good idea to trace the silhouette of some silly bands that are related to my character with the pen tool to create a set of "silly bands" that accompany my character on the background.

For some reason, I think putting Halloween characters into the bamboo forest is a cool idea. These Halloween figures will bring some mystery effects to my background.  

Here are the Halloween silly band characters I traced using the pen tool in Illustrator:

Research on background scene

I found some background scenes that give me inspirations on what kind of background I should probably place my Panda Lady on. 

The sketching of Panda Lady

Here is the sketching of my Fashionable Panda Lady. I was wondering what kind of panda body I should draw. Every panda is fat, but I don't want my Panda Lady to be too fat. My Panda Lady likes fashion and beautiful dresses! So my Panda Lady does exercise and watches her diets, and fortunately she is skinnier than all of the other pandas! haha

Do you notice her boots? They are made of bamboos. Of course, my Panda Lady is also very creative! She DIY's her boots by utilizing natural materials.

Panda Lady's Dress

I am going to take the middle one from my panda dress series and use its style to create my Panda Lady's dress.

Research for My Fashionable Panda Lady

I searched online in order to get some inspirations and ideas about my character - the Fashionable Panda Lady.

Here are what I have found that may be useful for my character design .
         
                                                                   Panda Lady face ideas

                                                                 Panda Lady boots ideas

Fashionable Panda Lady

I am planning to create a character called "Fashionable Panda Lady".

Fashionable Panda Lady is a cartoon panda girl who is crazy about fashion. haha...

I designed a dress line based on the inspiration from the panda image before. I am going to create my Fashionable Panda Lady from the ideas of this dress line. But it will be impossible for my Panda Lady to be this skinny. I am not sure if my dress will look good on the Panda Lady.

ArtistADay

I like Artist Elsa Mora's pieces. She is a very creative artist who turned plain paper into beautiful pieces that can tell vivid stories.

Artist A Day - Elsa Mora