Sharing a Procreate doodle video of my character Noodle.

She is a pre-school kid who gets a little overstimulated and diabolical before bedtime, so I was inspired by the manic characters in old sugary cereal commercials when I was designing her. Her hair is a spiky, like spines and horns on a monster dinosaur. Her face is all eyes and mouth to make her extra expressive.

For this doodle, I used Procreate, which records your drawings in a time-lapse video. I use a syrupy black ink brush for her line work, because I want the humor and cartoony expressiveness of old newspaper comic strip characters, and I color her in using bits of pink/orange felt and flowery blue & yellow fabric I scanned, to make her appear as if she has really comfy pajamas on and give her a children’s book quality.

Using real world textures for color was inspired by paper cutting illustrations in picture books like The Snowy Day, or Eric Carle’s tissue paper collages. Scanning textures and using them to color in my characters helps to make digital drawings feel more natural, I think. I offset the color slightly to give her a vintage printed look. Do you think she is ready for shenanigans?