One curious way to create an illustration

I want to offer one interesting tool for work, which I personally learned about a year ago while taking an illustration course. To begin, we will cut out an arbitrary small-sized character from thick cardboard. The pose can be any, as you wish. Where the character's feet meet the floor, I left a rectangular base. When bent, it will allow the figurine to stand on the surface.

Now we need your imagination and lighting devices that you have at home or in the office. Place your character in different locations, highlight him from the front, below, behind, or however you like. Use directional or diffuse lighting, Christmas tree garlands, hand-held lanterns, glass containers that beautifully refract light, transparent colored plastic, etc.

Here's what I got. My inspiration was so great and unstoppable, so I took a few more pictures. Here's the results

One of the compositions fully corresponded to my ideas, so I started working on the illustration. I created a sketch, agreed on it with the curator and started drawing.

After several hours of work and a couple of rounds of edits from my curator, the illustration was ready. I hope you find this technique useful and may be use it for one of your future projects!

Thank you for your attention! Have a nice day!

Mock-up designed by yeven_popov / Freepik, rawpixel.com / Freepik

Mock-up designed by yeven_popov / Freepik, rawpixel.com / Freepik