I am taking part in the Charactober character design challenge of 
Here is how I made it
I always start with the colors. I chose these beautiful and vibrant autumn colors. I am not so picky here just those colors that make me excited. If you know me you know what I would do next
I would scratch off those colors on my canvas to reveal or rather to etch an image. At this early stage of my design I don't have a clear idea on what this creature might look like as I always do it spontaneously. Of course I do have my guidelines and one of them is I should follow the look or aesthetic of my previous forest folks characters you can find them on my older posts.
You can see the image above is symmetrical, I am doing this technique to save time drawing each body part when everything can be mirrored using symmetry. I positioned my character where there is enough bright red and amber on my canvas so I must flip the canvas vertically to achieve that. I actually started with the shorts , I am thinking pumpkin shape then worked my way up. For the sleeves I just made something that looks like the serrations on an autumn leaf. The twigs with berries just happened.
Twenty minutes later this is what I have. I adjusted the pair of twigs on its head by adding some more details like an extra leaf and a berry to give them more weight and structure. They are looking a little like antlers now. The shorts now has a pair of slender legs. To complete the look I have my character this pair of whimsical boots. I thought they were beautiful and leafy. What could be a better tool to add to a leaf sorter? Maybe a small rake. So I immediately sketched some bunch of leaves on one hand and a rake on the other. I am already feeling good having accomplished the basics. Later I will try to improve it by removing or adding details. Let's see what happens next
The sleeves are a bit big for its frame so I will scratch off some of its edges to trim some weight and give it a balanced proportions. I am also considering the leaf collar to remove some weight to it and make it look a little more like a leaf.
After a few more minutes I managed to define the sleeves and collar a bit better. I increased the size of the lines on those holes I kind of went overboard on that TBH. The shorts and antlers also received the same kind of treatment. I like them more now. The goal here is to scratch off as many areas as possible without compromising the integrity of the image. If you can depict it with less the better. That is my idea of a scratch art.
It is almost finished at this stage and this is the part where it gets taxing as I clean up and remove those areas that are intended to be dark or scratched off. I went back to the antlers looked for those small details that could be scratched off like I said previously the less lines or areas the better. I further tweaked the shape of the helmet made it smaller then added something that looked like brows. I removed the entire neck because it's giving an unnecessary length to it so if I remove it there's no more issue with neck and body proportions. I am glad I saw that and did something about it. I am also starting to make the image less symmetrical by adding more shadows on one area and adding leaves to the left of the screen.
This is the final design after an hour or so I finally arrived at this look. I could settle with this one but I will try to improve it by removing some details or reshaping some leaves.
I did another edit found some misshapen leaves so I either removed or enhanced them they are just around four or five and the rest is already looking great for me. This is the last thing I did, I added a layer for the glow effect. It is looking flat to begin with and that's the aesthetic but it would hurt if I add a light source since this character is already swallowed by thick darkness. The light gave it some highlights and made it look interesting. Took a while to finish but I love the results.
Hope you guys will join in this fun character design challenge I had fun designing my own.