Styling the characters was an important part of bringing out the differences in their personalities. Indira wears dark colors, tends towards street clothes, and brings a touch of practicality with her wardrobe.

By contrast, we wanted Fawn to appear ethereal, with billowy, flowy clothes that looked a little like dressing a doll. Indira wants more to disappear into the background, while Fawn presents to draw the eye. The way J.R. Doyle colored Fawn emphasizes this-- Fawn always pushes up from the background and is frequently the palest part of the color blocking in a shot. Likewise, Indira is frequently seen in blacks and darker colors. They're two people who seem quite different at a glance!

So how did we go about being consistent with their individual looks? On every project that we do, we have a step where Ananth goes sifting through styles and clothes online, with the aim of creating a folder of reference that helps fence a character into a particular look. For a book of this size, it was about 20 pieces of reference per character. This is enough to get a 'feeling', to be able to mix and match pieces, and to generously toss out some looks that don't quite get there. At the scripting stage, Ananth creates a folder per scene per character, with fairly meticulous notes about how to mix and match, customize and simplify (for instance, we generally omit patterns because they're a headache to draw over and over again). 

Hope that highlights some of the process behind the scenes! Next time we'll cover another aspect of Pixels of You! If you have something in particular you'd like for us to talk about, feel free to ask on twitter! Thanks for reading!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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