Character Designs: The Founding Fathers

As Tom mentioned yesterday, 2A! worked on an interactive piece for The Bill of Rights Institute. The client had a list of Founding Fathers they wanted featured in the animation, so I immediately set to work researching paintings of each one. I wanted to do my best to capture their "look" so they were easily recognizable, since we only have painted records of their appearance.



I broke from my normal routine of sketching in Sketchbook Pro and instead jumped right into Flash for these. I started by doing rough line art in blue so it was easy to re-work and tweak if it was necessary. We only needed busts of each founding father, so it was fun to capture not only their faces but their approximate body mass as well. I feel it really adds to the character. Not to mention I got to draw colonial clothing too!

Below is the lineup of the final ink and paints of each character. Can you recognize who they all are? I really like the color scheme I used, as it feels very antique to me. I must have been influenced by all the beautiful paintings I saw!




So which founding father is your favorite? I admit I am most pleased with how Alexander Hamilton came out. Why not head over to the The Bill of Rights Institute webpage and decide for yourself?

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