Characters Are Cool, But PROPS Can Pump The Composition - 'Toast' Process Video & PSD File

Hey everyone, here is a quick description of the process behind "Toast

Concept

I was having a conversation about the reference I use for this illustration and the word that perfectly described the mood was "chill", this was the first step into the reference analysis. After, several ideas came to my mind to justify this concept, for instance, two characters lying down on the beach, just relaxed, but in my opinion, this was too bland also people on the beach often wear little cloth. I wanted a story or context that brought more information to the composition.

Then the "spa" idea popped up, relaxed as well but in that context, I'll have a bit more of information in fabric folds as the robes and towel are commonly found in these places, besides I have an old reference from a long time ago of a woman smoking while reading the newspaper with sunglasses and a towel on the head, very nice IMO. Apparently, this particular situation of women having a spa day is a very popular aesthetic as I saw too many of them recommended by Pinterest, it's like a girls day with skincare and stuff, I'm not familiar with this concept but I was happy to find people actually like it. This kind of made me feel more sure about this direction.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/762797255664952953/

I did not want to make just two characters sitting and doing nothing, I wanted to make them worthy of earning this reward, as you know I like to make characters relate through pain most of the time, or at least I try as this brings some kind of extra layer of humanity. So I spent a few minutes thinking about how visually suggest they have been working very hard and this is like their day off, to recover. That's when my violent self rose to suggest that perhaps they were fighters and this was their celebration day, right after winning the day before. Now I had enough to move on with the execution.

Execution

My approach at the beginning was fully brush strokes, I even added colors and shadows without making a line, I thought the idea was so simple that I felt comfortable making it that way, mostly to double-check if it would look interesting enough at the end, I was a bit concerned about the composition lacking dark values and therefore insufficient contrast but small details like the black swimsuit on one of the characters helped me find that balance.

I often balance my composition with interesting cloth or costume choices, but this time, since they would be dressed the same way it would be a problem, the interesting aspects of those robes had to come from the values (light and shadows). So, I needed to think of something better.

I spent some extra time on props around the characters like the chairs, table, food, boxer gloves, the champion belt, the wad of dollar bills and the most complex one, the newspaper. I wanted this story to be clear and painting bruises and bandages on the characters I knew it wouldn't be enough, that's why there are so many sneak peeks around.

I'll say this composition was more prop execution than character, you will see in the video process how I built the characters (shapes and line) relatively quickly the first two hours of the process and then I basically changed nothing during the rest aside from some small face adjustments, something that is not always the case. The rest of the time I was making sure the information conveyed with props were assertive and making adjustments in the shadow and colors.

Conclusion

If you have a very interesting story but your characters are so visually simple, think of creating a composition before or after the action that describes your character's profession, and use props to describe what happened and why, this is not always the case, but I hope with today's example you find some useful ideas when trying a similar approach.