Design Practice: OUGD503 // Ellas Kitchen // Characters

As part of the concept that i came up with and that we decided to use throughout the products, i need to create some characters. These characters are coming from the ingredients of the products from the brand.

I have looked through the website and at the products on there, to look for the ingredients used and which i could make characters from.
A small list from some of the ingredients used within the products

strawberry

mango

banana

apple

blueberry

pumpkin

mushroom

potato

pear

tomato

peas

pepper

raisin

carrot

broccoli

parsnip

spinach

prunes

peach

grape

orange

The fruit and vegetables that are highlighted are the ones that i am going to create into characters.

Also from looking at the website and into the products, it has given me the colour palette to use throughout the products.

This i have taken from the packaging of the smoothies, there are 5 colours, which are all determined by the ingredients:

- Orange

- Purple

- Red

- Yellow

- Green

For the illustrations themselves, i want to keep them pretty simple and have a hand drawn feel to them.

This is the basic outline of the characters, the small legs and arms are little details to them. I am going to add facial features, but i have quite worked them out yet.

From doing the initial outlines, i thought to keep the characters in keeping with the idea of ellas kitchen and cooking, i would add kitchen utensils to the characters. The two in the middle are the main characters, so i didnt think to put ones with these two, just to differentiate them.

Now i wanted to add colour to the characters, I have looked through imagery to get an idea of the sort of colours for each item i have drawn, here is the colour palette for the characters below.

To add colour to the characters i was in two minds how to do it, the first idea was a way to keep them within the hand drawn style and instead of having them the solid colour i would have the colour below the character in a scribble - this looks like a child has coloured them in - keeping in line with the child like brand aesthetics. I do like this idea and think it looks good here, but when using them within the products, i think it may look out of place and not fit in with everything else. So i have done the second idea.

Here i have taken the illustrations and added solid colour to them. I initially did them without a outline colour, but they looked abit flat and boring, so added the outline in a darker colour of the characters has made them stand out more and give them more detail. I do actually prefer these characters here than the ones above, which i didn't think i would, but in terms of the products we are going to create, i think these will aesthetically fit in better and be more widely usable across the range of media formats.

Here is an example to show the difference between the outlined character and one without. As you can see the top one without and outline looks like a flat image, it has no real umph to it, it just sort of sits on the page and blends in a little, where as with the ones below the outline makes them jump off the page a little and adds that extra bit to make them more eye catching, it also makes the other smaller details fit in with the design of them better.

Finished Designs

After doing the basic outlined shape of the characters and adding the little utensils to each one, i have added the facial features to each characters.