Early in the new year while sketching ideas for a new project to pursue, I was drawn to a few doodles of characters with large limbs and bodies complete with a tiny head. The first drawing of a football character charging down the field was the start of the Big Buds series.
After creating the first few characters I came up with a set of rules that helped guide the designs moving forward:
• Each character would stick to the theme of sports
• Create a unique pose relative to the specific sport
• Only use angles in increments of 15°
• Work with a limited color palette
• Keep proportions of limbs and torsos similar
• Play with the scale of props for maximum fun
• Design each character with a sense of motion
These rules weren't necessarily hard and fast, but they aided in guiding the direction of the characters as they were illustrated.
The first Big Buds character
Finally, during a series of Winter Olympics themed characters were created in celebration of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The goal with these characters was to celebrate a variety of sports while also creating a set of looping animated gifs.
