Before I continued with the rest of my book I completed the designs of my bee characters, using the sketches I uploaded and Photoshop. I have only worked on the one front pose for each character, and I want to experiment on using just this pose to start with, and then adding in other poses later on.

I started by removing the sketch and placing into a new blank canvas, removing the white and duplicating the sketch to make the other half of the bee.

Secondly I went over the outline with a small black paintbrush to make the outline of the bees more visible. And then began colouring the characters in.

I planned to use my sketch of the female bee for the character “Sally” however once edited the character looked more appropriate for the “Mother” character and I was short of a “Sally” and “Holly” bee. Using segments of different characters and editing them together, I was able to create the two new characters and distinguishing them somehow from the rest.

My focus in creating these characters was to make an obvious difference in look between each of them, so it would be easy for my younger target audience to distinguish between the characters and be able to follow the storyline.