Rosa (Time Lapse Video)

I've been busy illustrating characters for the next installment of Mission 4 of Mission US, which is set in turn-of-the-century New York during the big immigration boom. This time I recorded a few of my illustrations... This is Rosa, a young 14-year old Italian immigrant girl who our main character Lena befriends.

I start these characters with a quick pencil sketch based on some approved historical reference images.

I spent some time exercising my hand drawing abilities to get the hands right, as you can see from the hand sketches around the page.

The pencil sketch is where I make all my illustration decisions and what you see is basically what you get once I digitize it. I make some minor changes and decisions as I digitize it but it's pretty much just tracing and coloring at that point with illustrator, which takes a few hours. There's generally one or two rounds of minor tweaks until we get the final character art...