Exercise: Character development

I started with a web search,

https://www.google.es/search?q=character&hl=en&rlz=1C1AVSA_enES462&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=70YoUZioH4-whAfhyoGQCA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=785#imgrc=8JGDtPwXFw2ZPM%3A%3Bxur0KEj7qffSzM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffc09.deviantart.net%252Ffs32%252Ff%252F2008%252F209%252Fe%252F3%252FCharacter_Design_by_Tobitkiwi.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffitrianijafar.blogspot.com%252F2012%252F10%252Fcharacter-design.html%3B999%3B1511 

this site has a great example of a 360 degree depiction of a middle aged man

http://toonjamstudios.com/cartoon-services-business-cartoons/cartoon-character-designer/?nggpage=2

and another cartoon of a famous middle aged man amongst other celebrities, I like these for their sparse clearness http://toonjamstudios.com/cartoon-illustrator-for-hire/

I also love these Judy Brown cartoons for their looseness and humour http://www.judybrown.co.uk/illustration_galleries.html

especially the baby http://www.judybrown.co.uk/Black_and_white1/4_little_o.html

and the dancing dog http://www.judybrown.co.uk/digital_art_gallery1/7_dancing_dog_cartoon.html

Great little film about the designing of Meg from the Disney short Paperman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bls4Tz_WEuQ&NR=1&feature=endscreen

I find these children by Sarah Preston very sweet and expressive

http://www.lemonadeillustration.com/work/?page=1&artist=196&name=http___www.lemonadeillustration.com_sarahpreston&cat=1&id=114

I collected together some photos of friends who are pretty cartoonish, and I mean that as a compliment, and decided to try some sketches of them - but this page turned into an experimental scribble, which although hard to decipher threw up some possibilities for development and was a good exercise in facial expressions....so far they mostly only have heads....

I found this excellent image to help me with the 360 degree views of a female figure http://www.figuredrawingtemplates.com/female-figure-drawing/
and used it as a guide while drawing my character's body. I chose the girl because she came out of nowhere and had quite a personality. This is the pencil sketch, 

she's mostly naked so now it's time to dress and colour her.

Looking back through my sketch book I was inspired by some of the sketches for the part 2 exercise 'Turning words into pictures' to use water based ink and felt tip pen with a wash of water to colour my character 'Lydia'

I tweaked the contrast and brightness in photoshop and multiplied the layers to make her a little bolder.

I think I've made a good start to this exercise, with a range of costumes and expressions to show the character in different roles; I particularly like the serene swimsuit pose. The drawings are a bit messy but I quite like the informality of them.

Here's my second character, developed from the set of heads on my initial page of sketches.

I decided to try drawing with my tablet, he's a bit rough and ready because I drew him quickly but I think his personality comes out in each pose despite that. This exercise was fun.