Character Development - Shy Boy

My first character that I was particularly happy with started as a series of coloured shapes and faces, I then began to add hair and changed the natural colours. I think its the bob shaped hair cut that appeals to me with this character, he seems almost anxious in his expression and this is an emotion that I think would be quite interesting to try and display through a character. His red cheeks are another aspect of the face that make him an appealing character to me. I also like the semi realistic characteristics that he has.
I find that in my work I often take this approach of using a realistic element and combining it with almost cartoony aspects. I'm not sure this approach always works and I feel that I should definitely try and work on this, maybe this is something I should approach differently within this task, or maybe not, I'll have to see how my characters develop as I experiment more with different mediums and shapes.
 My next step in developing this particular character was to look at how I could draw him and create him in a number of different ways. I thought that this approach would be able to help me get a sense of what worked best and what didn't work in terms of adjusting how his face and colours in his face convey the emotion of anxiety and stress to the viewer.

I used techniques such as collage and tracing so that I would be able to see which mediums work well and which take away from the idea of the character. I found the use of cut paper an interesting an idea, I enjoyed doing it and I find it athletically pleasing however, I feel that for this particular character and the development of it, the hair in the green paper is irrelevant and doesn't need to be overcomplicated by a busy material such as that.

I experimented further with the idea of using paper, I tried putting the paper behind the tracing paper as I thought about how this might mean that the material might become less busy and over complicated, however I feel that this took away from the overall aesthetic of the paper and made it almost pointless to use. I definitely feel that I want to experiment with more three diminentional shapes and materials such as collage but I feel that after this particular experiment, this project might not be the best to embark on such a discovery. 

The next step in the development was to look at how the character can be changed and looked at in different ways. The way that the face is seen and moves around is an important element of the character design, I found this task really difficult for myself, I struggled with making the shy boy look like the same character when put in different positions with his head. I found that when turning to the left or right I wasn't able to get the face looking the same in terms of the facial features. This is definitely something that I will have to work on and consider if I am going to take this character forwards.

My next step that I took in the character development was to experiment with different ways that I could make the physical face, as I said earlier, I wanted to experiment with the idea of either doing fully realistic or completely cartoony, however, I feel that in a way, that is what I like about my own work, the combination of real elements mixed with the completely unreal bright aspects. So after drawing out the real face, I found that it didn't accurately convey the emotions that I wanted to for this particular character, therefore I feel that for the final one I need to continue with mixing the two real and unreal drawing styles.

The final storyboard that I created for this character was the idea of him being shy and subtle, perhaps by gently moving his hands or just his cheeks subtly going red. Since I am trying to convey the emotion of being shy and anxious I don't think that I should overwork this gif, but instead keep in gentle with slow and little movements.