Introducing the new Children’s Hope Kids

When I first met Alison McNamara and she told me about Children’s Hope and the plans she had for her new website, I knew this was going to be a fun project to work on. Together we discussed the new Children’s Hope Kids; Tom, Pixie, Holly and Alec – what they might look like, their characters and the type of mischief they would be getting up to within the site – and once we had settled on their names, I went off to design them.

First of all I came up with a number of overall styles for the cartoons and showed these to Alison. She was delighted with all of them, but chose a slightly rough, pencil drawn style, as she wanted something that looked like a kid had drawn it, or a child would be able to replicate it with ease, should they feel the need to!

Once the style was chosen I got to work bringing the four characters to life, making each different from the other – Tom with his curly red hair, Alec with his cool flick, tomboy Pixie with her fringe, and Holly with her electric pedal bike. Most of all I wanted to make them look as if they could be a real gang of pals. Alison and I were thrilled with the outcome of my nights and nights of sketching, and we hope you will be too.

Welcome to the (web) world, Alec, Tom, Pixie and Holly!