Charactober: The Great Leafturn Drawing Challenge

The Great Leafturn

Yay It is October once again, which means it is time for another Charactober drawing challenge in Draw A Day community. I believe this would be our third year running this character design challenge.

But this year, Charactober is going to be a little different.

The whole idea actually started from a character I saw posted in our own Draw A Day community by our dear friend @cabalen. She created an adorable character she called a Leaf Sorter, and something about that job really stayed in my mind. I started thinking, if there is someone in the forest whose job is to sort the autumn leaves, what other jobs might exist in a forest getting ready for its biggest autumn celebration?

And that little thought turned into a whole month. Thank you Krisette for that gem of inspiration you didn't know I could use

So welcome to The Great Leafturn.

This time, instead of creating 31 characters who simply share an autumn or woodland mood, we are going to imagine an entire forest community preparing for an annual autumn festival.

Every character has a job.

There will be gatherers collecting leaves, acorns, berries, mushrooms, seeds and twigs. Then the makers who turn those materials into garlands, lanterns, wreaths, banners, candles and festival clothes.

After that we meet those characters who watch the weather, map the forest ways, care for the homes and more.

Then comes the food.

Chestnut roasters, pie bakers, soup stirrers, brewers, table setters and even a feast taster will all have their part to play.

And finally, when everything is ready, the festival crew takes over and someone has to stay awake and watch over everything after dark.

Until finally...

The Great Leafturn.

The festival begins.

This is quite different from my previous Charactober, Wildwood Wisp, where the 31 prompts were connected mainly through autumnal motifs, atmosphere, mystery and different pieces of woodland lore.

This year, I wanted to try something more connected. Think of it as building a little forest community one character at a time.

The basket of leaves from Day 1 might become decorations later. The twigs gathered early in the month might become lantern frames. The berries and mushrooms might eventually end up on the festival table you get the idea.

So while you are drawing your character for each day, you are also slowly building the world around them.

And there is one important thing I want to keep from the very beginning:

These characters are yours.

I will give you the occupation, the setting, some visual ideas, but I will not give the characters names. You get to decide what creature they are, what they look like, what personality they have and what name they have.

The Leaf Sorter that inspired this challenge belongs to @cabalen, and I want to make that clear because her drawing sparked the idea. But The Great Leafturn itself is an original world created for this challenge. We are taking the little spark of a forest character with a very specific autumn job and seeing where our own imaginations can take it.

You can draw traditionally, digitally, simply, wildly, cute, serious, detailed or completely in your own style.

You can do all 31 days, or choose only the prompts that make you want to draw.

There is no need for every character to look the same either. The forest should feel like a real community with many different creatures and occupations.

By the end of October, hopefully we will not just have 31 drawings.

We will have a whole forest preparing for one very important event.

The Great Leafturn begins with the Leaf Sorter. I will write another post about it later so watch out for it.

It all started because @cabalen made us wonder:

Who sorts all those leaves, anyway?