Week 6- The Toads

This week I moved on to a couple of new characters, the Toad Mother, and Toad Son, 2 main antagonists of the Thumbelina story. I started out by gathering reference of common toads found in Europe, then I drew  studies of them, I found a few key features of their bodies, such as how they have thing upper arms and bulging forearms, with slit like eyes, and molted skin.

I also gathered some reference of real people to aid my design. I referenced the looks of  Lattice Royal, Divine and Elaine Stritch to get the feeling of unapologetic eccentricity that I wanted in the mother, with features from  Victorian criminals to make her unsettling.

With my reference in mind I sketched a few initial designs:

Toad mother designs, I chose 4 in the end with 2 in a close second

I struggled with which of the above designs to pick for my final, as each of them had their own merits when asking for feedback people liked all of them for different reasons as well. The only one I could safely write  off was number 1 as she did not seem as villainous as the rest.

A quick re-sketch of my two favourite designs, the 2nd was a shorter and more fluid precess to the 1st

I was unsure whether or not I would design the Toad son as he doesn't really do anything in the original story. ("In the swampy margin of a broad stream in the garden lived the toad, with her son. He was uglier even than his mother, and when he saw the pretty little maiden in her elegant bed, he could only cry, "Croak, croak, croak."") But I felt the mother needed the contrast of another character with her. I  imagined the toad son as a small scrawny character, a large brutish type bodyguard for his mother (something I scraped as I wanted the mother to look the most dangerous or the two) and a straight up toad, (as all he says in the book is "croak".) as I thought it would be fun to have the mother look more unhinged, talking to a toad that cant respond back.

Colour Pallets based off my reference, with the chosen pallet on the right

I plan on going back to the Toad son as he's not as strong as the toad mother in his design, besides that I'm happy to leave them for now.