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The look of the character was inspired by anime cartoons and began as an initial pencil and pen sketch, which was when redone in Berol. It was then scanned and imported in Illustrator, given the Live Trace once over, coloured, shadows created and then placed on a photographic background shot of a location in West Bromwich.

Of course I’d forgotten to include my glasses which were added later. The whole project took an afternoon and will finally appear elsewhere as a 100×100 pixel avatar. So here is a chance to see the full sized piece.

The gallery below shows the basic elements that were used to create the final illustration.

West Bromwich background photograph courtesy of Richard Franks.

Stardust was created to accompany a six word story I wrote for the ‘Six Word Stories from Local People’ project run by Multistory, in collaboration with SMITH magazine and The Public. The project invited residents of the six towns in Sandwell to tell their own story in six words.

The illustration started as a hand drawn image with all the colour and star effects added in Photoshop.

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The final illustration appeared in a publication to celebrate the year of communities which contained over 100 stories and illustrations, and was featured in an exhibition at the Public Building, West Bromwich.

‘Six’ was inspired by the six word memoirs project run by SMITH Magazine in America. SMITH Magazine have also produced a hardback book of six word stories titled “One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours? “. The book is available online from Amazon.