The Classical Elements: Character Development

Based on the feedback I received last week in my interim crit, I decided to experiment with adding texture to digital drawings of my characters. To do this I simply placed in a photograph of the element from Google on Photoshop and used different overlay settings until I found a balance between my drawing and the photograph that I liked. For my Earth character this was pretty straight forward, as I knew that I wanted her texture to be similar to tree bark. I feel that this character design is really successful and I don't feel that I will deviate much from this design at all.

For my water character though it was a lot more difficult, as there is many different textures to water depending on whether it's standing water, rushing water, etc. At the moment I'm leaning towards the second two designs because I really like the tone within them and I feel that the reflections from the light in the first character design are too bright.

After getting a couple of my peers' feedback, the second character design for water seems to be the most appropriate for my animation. Now that I have decided for definite that I will be using digital characters it's time to start creating my environment and experimenting with water movement, as this will be the biggest challenge of this animation.