A World Within the Claw Machine
This is one of my personal favourite illustrations, inspired by a dream I had where the toys inside a claw machine suddenly came to life. While the dream was still fresh in my mind, I decided to turn it into an illustration.
I spent a lot of time working on the little details, using this project as an opportunity to challenge my patience and see how far I could push the level of detail in my work.
Unfortunately, part of the original source file became corrupted, so I can only share some of the process images I managed to recover. A little reminder to myself to back up my work more often!
I collected visual references to explore different facial features, character proportions, poses, and clothing styles. These references helped me develop the original characters and experiment with different design ideas.
Before adding colour, I explored two different grayscale value studies: one with a darker overall tone and the other with a lighter tone. This helped me compare the lighting, contrast, and overall mood before deciding on the final colour palette.