Summer crocodile

I created a quirky crocodile character suitable for a lot of diffent genres. It can be a character on a package of sweets als well as the main character in a childrens book. it cpold be printed on a t-shirt or be a decoration on a poster.
The most important thing for me is fun, when it comes to creating something for children. The character should make me laugh while I'm creating as well as making children smile. For that purpose, I like to combine opposites (in this case a cute unicorn with a normally quite dangerous crocodile). And I also like a vibrant and colourful palette.

I did this illustration completely in photoshop using my Wacom Cintiq.

In the next step I search the Internet, books, nature or wahtever feels right for inspiration and creat a moodboard with my references.

In the next step, I try to create a rough sketch using the references only as an inspiration. I always keep in mind, that it is important, to create a dynamic character. In order to archieve that, I use different directions and a variety of straight and curved lines.
In this step, it is also important to imagine what kind of charcter you are drawing. I took the big dangerous teeth of the crocodile for eating pineapple while going swimming. He looks hungry, but not dangerous, especially with his cute unicorn companion.

Next I create a base colour palette for the whole character. I like to have some contrast in the illustration, so I try to find a good balance between light and dark tones. When it comes to contrast, the ppposite colour of green would be red. In this case, i choose a pinkish tone to complement the green, which makes a nice contrast too.

Now it is time for placing the base colours and if necessary you can do some ajustments. I really like to work with a lot of diffent layers, so I place every single element on a diffent layer.
I know, this is a lot of work, but you have the freedom, to play around with arms and eyes afterwards wich is a lot of fun! Especially with mooving the eyes, you can create so many diffent moods.

The last step is the most fun in the whole process - lights and shadows! So I have a light- and a shadow layer for each object. For the shadow, you can play around with different blening modes (I ilke to use multiply the most). With the help of light and shadow, you creat depth in your illustration. Just have a look, what a difference this is combined to the flat colours we started with!
For extra depth, I add some details and structure here and there until I´m satisfied with the result!

The very last step is the background. This could also be a landcape or something, but I decided to draw a structured coloured background. I took the pinkish colour that complemented the green so well and softened it a bit. By choosing this colour, the teeth stand out a lot better than with the white background.
The finished illustration could be used as card in a board game! And which character would you like to draw?