Yeti color studies

While exploring more of Yeti's life and personality, I started to wonder about what color he was. Even though I've been mostly drawing him black and white, color is important to me and will be important in Yeti's world. Since getting a character's color right is one of those tough but critical aspects of character design, I decided to start working toward a final color scheme now.

This is my first attempt. I went pretty bold with the contrasting colors and design. I think some of these are pretty fun, but they seem too different from the original black and white character. I want both b&w Yeti and color Yeti to feel like the same person. Also, I realized I wanted Yeti's color pallet to be simpler, because I envision his environment being very vibrant and colorful. Placing a super colorful character in a super colorful environment can overload the image and your character can get lost in the shuffle.

Here's attempt number 2. I wanted to try something more subdued and more neutral, but I went too far in that direction this time. These pallets are a little too boring, in my opinion and the cool color scheme was not as inviting or appealing. 

Attempt number 3. I went back to warmer colors and tried to keep Yeti's over all color on the lighter side. These versions are getting close, but they still seem too boring. I wanted to add a bit more pop in the design, even if it was just a little pop.

And here's attempt number 4. These are the closest yet, (although they still need some tweaking). The darker color "pops" seem to liven up the character and the over all lighter value makes Yeti feel consistent with his b&w version.

I'm still playing around with this design a bit, but I would love to hear your thoughts on what I have so far. Feel free to let me know which versions you like best in the comments section. (And thanks for letting me share my process! ^_^)

onward and upward,

Bethany