Champion/Podium Inspiration

I had the idea of incorporating a podium for a character to stand on to emphasis the phrase ‘weight loss champion’. But I needed a reminder of how a podium looked and how people looked standing on one to help me to draw my character. Below are my initial drawings in a sketchbook.

First two sketches of champion character

I wasn’t happy with how these two looked, the right hand drawing was closer to what I had in mind. But the expression on the face looked cross/scary so I worked on creating a face that was pleased/looked happy. Here’s what I came up with:

This was the version I was happy to move forward with, so placed it within Illustrator to begin tracing it and creating vector shapes.

Weight Loss Champion V.1

Weight Loss Champion V.2

I printed these two off to look at how the colours worked in print and on the cream coloured card I intend to use for the cards. From this I would say that the purple/gold card looks best. I’ve yet to design the inside, but I will begin that tonight. I’ve toyed with the idea of adding more texture to the image, but I worry that it will just ed up spoiling it and the smoothness created by the colour will be lost. So I’m going to leave it as it is.