If I haven't made it clear that I'm pretty fond of Kirby, I thought I'd reiterate on that by making some new Kirby art in Illustrator. The main difference this time was that I used a reference image. Last time I made art of Kirby in Illustrator, I was teaching myself how to actually use the program. Overall, it was good for showing me the ropes of Illustrator, but there were still areas of the design where I needed to improve.
This time around, I wanted to have something to guide me a bit, and teach me how to use some other features. One thing that I did that I hadn't really done before was utilize the gradient tool. Looking at the shading in my old design, the lines on the shadows are really sharp, and easy to identify. It's not that it's necessarily bad, but I wanted to give my design a softer shading job to give it a different look and see how well I could use the gradient tool. In the end, this is what I came up with:
Even just uploading this to my website, I'm looking at it again, and am really satisfied with how it came out. The shading looks really natural and soft, the shapes are really smooth, and feels pretty professional. I was especially worried about making his face in a side-view perspective. That's something I've definitely struggled with in the past, but thanks to the reference image, I think I made it work.
With all of those positives said though, I do still think I can improve on this design, one thing that I think could look better are the little shiny spots in his eyes. I was having a little trouble deciding on what shape to go with, and while I think the Xs work, there's something about them that I think makes them look less appealing.
Overall, it was a lot of fun making this new design, and I'm super excited to make some new art in the future using the gradient tool. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later!
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