The Leaf Sorter A Cool Forest Fox in Autumn.
I saw a new drawing challenge here on our community and the character design prompt is a Leaf Sorter. This was just a few minutes ago I just can't wait to build the scene from scratch and design my own character. I am excited about the changing of the season and the colors around. The leaf sorter is quite an interesting job or design prompt for that matter. Let's see what happens. Instead of a traditional woodland creature, I wanted my take to feature this sharp, slightly cool furry character and I decided that it would be a forest fox who takes his job seriously but has plenty of style while doing it. You know to take away the boredom of the job sorting through heaps of leaves.
I have a big canvas to fill with those rich autumn colors and falling leaves floating everywhere and scattered across the ground so they stay the true star of the visual. I gave my character a bold orange fringe made with autumn leaves, a pair of sunglasses, and a long teal scarf to give him some extra attitude, along with a small woven basket to handle the task of collecting. Oh and an apron which was mentioned in the design brief. The image below shows the initial colors I got excited to use like mustard, golden yellow, green and reds. The green trees in the background I am not sure if they help with my vision so I change the colors with earthy browns and muted mustard hope I made the right decision here. At some point the sky is bright orange but it is competing with the leaves. I had to change the color of the fox and made it very light so he doesn't blend with the environment.
I leaned into an energetic, stylish vibe rather than something quiet and sleepy. I want my character to fully enjoy back breaking work and noticing every tiny difference in color, size, and shape as he examines that single leaf.
It’s such a satisfying process, building up the shapes and details stroke by stroke until the character and the autumn breeze come to life together. Notice his squinting eyes that means he is loving and enjoying the job and the season
Thanks to 