Trying to practice various aspects of the graphic design skillset, this project was meant to challenge my illustration and character design prowess. The main challenge to accomplish this was to create a dragon reaper character. Some additional stipulations for the project were to appeal to a woodland mood as well as give the character an animal skull as a mask. On top of this, there would be no background in the final product. Which challenged the subject matter to be as interesting as possible to make up for the lack of environment.
With idea exploration being an important focus, a lot of various subject matters were tested in each sketch. The secondary goal from this sketching phase was to create ideas that could be used in other examples which could be combined and tweaked later. Various poses were also given a great amount of attention to really give more character to the illustration.
In the end, this design was chosen as it stood out as being the most unique take on the classic reaper dynamic. Instead of being the typical scary entity, I wanted to take on this approachable character with this element of co-existing with nature as moss grows and creatures interact with the embodiment of death.
Following a similar process to the reaper character, other character designs and illustrations can be seen below. These drawings along with the reaper served as a great way to practice hand illustrating using both digital means like Photoshop and Procreate as well as traditional graphite.
