4. Critically reflect on the challenging and novel visual solutions to a brief

Personally I found the the Dreamworks brief the most visually novel. It was challenging to pick a character of the wide variety to develop in a new  time and setting.  Since I wanted to diversify my portfolio and challenge myself with this brief,  I picked characters and an art style outside my comfort zone. I decided to use a style that would hopefully fit the Dreamworks brand. 

Although I had specific cartoons in my mind while working, ('Grimm's Adventures of Billy and Mandy' for example)  I consciously did not search and use cartoony reference in order to find out what my own cartoon style is:

I did not want to use cartoon references, since this way there would be a risk of copyiing someone else's art style. Allowing my sketches to develop inspired by photography, further informed my own cartoon style to emerge and develop: 

Once I had this extra level of plalusability in my cartoon art style, the more I drew the characters the more confident I was feeling with it. I sketched out a variety of scenarios that highlight different character traits and potential storyline elements:

Colour experimentation of character interaction:

Once I had picked a composition for the final image, I tried improve the mannerisms of the characters. I over-exaggerated the gestures and facial expressions even further in order to highlight the characters' dynamic. Once I was comfortable enough with the composition I did an Adobe illustrator lineart for the first time. Controlling the line-weight of the strokes was a challenge. Originally wanted the image to be in block colour - like a still from a cartoon network show. But I did not find a variation that felt enough. So I shaded the image in Photoshop: