Leilani

Staple features:

• marine biologist
• sporty
• athletic build (swimmer)
• broader shoulders
• core strength
• Hawaiian features
• facial structure
• flowers in hair (yellow hibiscus) (Bikemaui n.d.)
• bronze skin tone

Gesture drawings - I found this was not the most helpful way for these particular characters, who are humans and wearing normal clothes. It could have been potentially useful in posing and fluidity but in the end these did not seem the best for this project.

Some sketches from references to get the gist of a swimmer's build.

 

Trying to find a base for her...

These also explore her 'evolved' form where she gets longer legs and broader shoulders, experimenting with sizes.

I then really roughly started to go for the outfit and see how extreme I wanted it to be.

I was receiving feedback from tutors around this time that I was taking too long on these early designs and needed to get a move on with more in-depth iterations and processes if I wanted to finish in time. For future characters, I spent less time on the very early steps to take this feedback into account. This is definitely because I was cautious of going into the final designs as they are FINAL but this got much easier after the first illustration was completed.

I got worried around this time and was quite hasty with this character, not having many clean iterations or changes in colour palette as I wanted to complete one illustration as a way to see how much time it would take me, and I could map that out for other characters. This is also because I had a pretty clear idea of her colours already i.e skin tone wouldn't change and flower colour wouldn't change. I could have however changed the colour of her outfits slightly to different shades of blue and the fish palette too.

Before tweaking her a bit this is what came out of it 

Testing out how much I wanted the pattern to stand out on her wetsuit.

These two images show before I overworked the piece. Looking at this piece later on, I think I now prefer it this way on the abs and face as it become a bit too much on the final one, making them stand out too much over the wetsuit. This was brought up to me as feedback from my lecturer and I agree. I took this into account, continuing on and I hope that shows.

The final character, I ended up scrapping the background in my final presentation on her but after the tweaks, I am happy with how she came out. I kept her simple in her outfit but gave it a little spruce up with the pattern and the splash of colour in her hair. I would love to draw her in more poses, like in the water, in the future.

Bibliography

Bikemaui, Bikemaui.com. Available at: https://www.bikemaui.com/flowers-of-hawaii/ [Accessed 1 June 2025].