Experiments in realism: Paige

Realism!

About two weeks ago I thought that it would be interesting to see what a more realistic eye style would add to my characters. Before that point, I’d mainly been drawing anime/manga-styled flat faces with basic shading. I set myself the challenge of upgrading one of my characters, Paige, to have more realistic shapes while trying to keep a cutesy look to the overall design.

After working on-and-off on this image for the past week (and getting it to a state on Friday evening where you could genuinely say that it was creepy) I decided to spend most of today cleaning up the look–mainly reducing the heavy shading and softening the hair. It’s getting late here now though, so I wanted to round this picture off for tonight. And rather surprisingly, I’m happy with it. Well, except that the hair probably needs more work–but if I spend much longer on this today, I’m going to crack xD

I’ve kept the colour palette I used visible on the right as people have asked me about this in the past. I’ll also try and write a few thoughts on my journal tomorrow.

Oh, and If you’re interested in what the character looked like before this "realistic redesign" have a look at this previous upload.