figures

Figures are something I struggle a lot with within my work, I usually try and avoid them but they are pretty necessary for this book. So again I looked at the russian children's book illustrations to get a sense of how I could develop the people of russia.

They used simple geometric shapes again, and are quite flat images - which work well with my process of cutting out textures. Some of the characters look like dolls/puppets with the disjointed lines which could be fun to work with.

I started out thinking about imagery for the beginning of the book - where peasants are unhappy with the government, they're starving and there are 4 main classes of people; peasants, workers, nobles and royalty. The peasants took up most of the population though. 
I quite like how these turned out, the most effective are the least detailed ones, where is is just shape and a bit of line work.

I started trying to contrast the peasants with the nobles - I thought colour could be quite a good way to do this; the nobles would be in extravagant, colourful clothing with a rather round figure whereas the peasants would be in black and skinny. 

I've also taken some inspiration from illustrator Roman Muradov. I love his figure work! Its so simple yet really give a sense of character with his little additions of detail - like the glasses and scarf. Also the contrast of block colour against the texture works so well. His shapes are so playful and interesting compared to standard, realistic figure work, I find.