Dragon guy design update

[Note to my tutors – my essay is the post below this one]. It's been a while since my last post, and I’ve done quite a lot since then so this post is going to be long. I’ve actually already sent my sister a design, as I wanted to get something sent before she came to visit, but I think I can do better, so I’m going to continue working on it in my downtime. Anyway, before that, here are some initial sketches of the guy:

As the character is my sisters idea and not my own, I didn't really have an image of him in my head before I started. I had some initial ideas about his behaviour and started there.

I've been thinking of him as quite introverted - keeping himself to himself, never staying too long in the same place - he does have a dragon for an arm after all! He would wear clothes that conceal as much as possible.

For the above reasoning, I've been picturing him with some kind of large cloak covering his body so that you cannot really see what is beneath it, especially his right arm. I've also been picturing him with one of those cone-shaped oriental hats, perhaps partly due to the Chinese theme of the dragon, but it would also be convenient for hiding his face.

I was thinking about other garments for hiding his face, and I found that I really liked the look of having a hood with his hair spilling out of the back. I thought it looked rather imperial, and something about it reminds me of the Chinese dragons. It also integrates well with having the guy wearing a large cloak.

At this point I decided for certain that this guy was, if not of Chinese descent, then certainly living in China or a fictional place based upon it. I googled some traditional Chinese garments, and chose some that I thought fit and looked good. I'm not certain that they definitely are traditional Chinese, but they look right for my purposes.

Although I had the clothing pictured fairly clearly in my mind, I found it easier to draw on the page after drawing out the cloak separately to the clothes worn underneath. I thought that the clothes underneath should have the sleeve missing for his right arm, in order to give him more comfort for his 'abnormality'.

Once I had the clothes sorted, I started working on a pose for the guy to be in on the postcard. It needed to have the dragon clearly visible, so it couldn't be hidden by the cloak, which means that the cloak either needed to be off or moved in some way. The pose I liked most in the end was the one I started with, with the guy braced and throwing back his cloak to release his dragon, as in the picture above.

This is the postcard I sent. Unfortunately due to being a bit pressed for time, this is the first time I'd tried out any colours for the guy, and I'm not convinced that I made the best choices. I had been imagining the hood being bright red, which in my head looked fantastic, and tied in with the imperialism I mentioned earlier. It conflicted with the idea of this guy trying to draw as little attention as possible to himself however, and I eventually decided to stick with that. When I get some more time I plan to come back to this and get the colours and textures right, and find a good way of representing the facial hair on the dragon. Anyway, hope you like it Iona!