The exclamation point is a simple, predictable thing. It is often trite and overused, but always effective in showing its purpose. It leaves no room or reason to be pondered, picked at, or analyzed.

Much like this piece of artwork.

My fellow deviant came up with a brilliant concept for a group project, and I was happy to contribute. Here is what the project was all about, in his words:

"The main concept is to design/illustrate 4 characters that are the representations of some grammatical signs. The marks are: ¿?, ¡!, (), and "".
Each character's personality is determined by the signs that circle around him/her/it.
As you may notice, in the English language the exclamation and question marks only go at the end of the sentence, but in Spanish it goes at the beginning and at the end, in fact, Spanish is one of the few (if not the only) that uses them like this.

I wanted to show that sentences can go beyond their "idea" boundaries and transform into beings, hence I thought about doing a series of characters with this premise."

He came to me a while ago (in June, embarrassingly enough) asking if I wanted to be a part of this clever project, and obviously I obliged. It's November, of course, which is why I said embarrassingly. I've neglected to make my contribution up until this point, several months later, and I have made it a point to apologize to him for taking so long to get around to it. And I apologize again.

Now, let me explain this character.

I wanted to do something simple and almost predictable, like the mark itself, so what better way to show simplicity than a basic portrait? You'll notice that the clothing has no shading or real detail whatsoever (not a product of laziness, but intent), and the background only features a gradient. And why did I draw a pretty Asian girl? Well, for one, I felt like drawing a pretty Asian girl at the time, but also, it seemed like pretty Asian girls are subject to a lot of overuse here on DA, be it in the form of anime or whatever. This was more of a subconscious decision, but it worked out for the best.

On a side note, this is actually my second try at this concept. My first was going okay I suppose, but I got bored with it and abandoned it altogether. Believe me, it'll never see the light of day.

As always, PLEASE FULL VIEW and enjoy!

Adobe Photoshop CS (sketch) and Adobe Illustrator CS, about 5-6 hours total.

EDIT: It was brought to my attention by somebody who actually speaks Spanish that I had the exclamation marks in the wrong order. The upside-down one was supposed to come first. Needless to say, I fixed it. Sorry for butchering another culture! I'm doing my best to make up for it! T_T