Concept Visuals

I wanted to test out how my visuals worked with paper collage backgrounds in order to determine what kind of colours I would need to consider within my entire design. I had a rough idea that I would utilise a lot of blues which is why I have tended to avoid that colour within my characters clothes and my bird. Adding a drop shadow really highlighted the paper cut element to my design and helped to emphasise my shapes as well as keeping my hand drawn elements separate from the backgrounds.  Since my backgrounds are so detailed they risked clashing with my hand drawn elements but after testing I am happy that the use of shadow and soft colours keep everything nicely defined. Wallpaper wise I stuck to damask victorian styled wallpaper (because I was so inspired by Tuesday Mourning's girl image) and felt like they worked well visually, although I never intended to draw my own patterns since using high quality photographs gives the visuals different textures which also aids in keeping everything clear and well defined. I am really very happy with the overall look and feel of what I have produced so far, my bird in particular is one of my favourite elements and I plan on having him feature heavily within my 10 year journey.

I don't plan on using these papers for backgrounds - I intend to use them as actual shapes that work within my design - like the waves below - which I think will stop all the patterns from clashing too much.