Character development

I have been roughing some characters trying to develop them as my first attempts where fairly generic. I didn't know enough about the characters personalities and actions in the book to make illustrations to communicate the story. I have tried to pick main characters that feature throughout the book that have strong personalities and contrasting physical appearances. I want to use the characters as a background for Adrian mole and I'm thinking of illustrating them all with the same colour scheme with Adrian in a contrasting colour in front of them. I want to make the characters into a landscape, like a forest. Scale will be an important element in this composition, I want the adult characters and even the dog to dwarf Adrian while he exclaims he is grown up. I will have to find a way to fit this idea into the dimensions of the cover. Ideally I want the adult characters to be at either side of Adrian with a skyline behind him but this may not work in a portrait frame without contorting the adults. I am going to develop the characters with cut and torn paper, I want to use this technique as it has worked well for me recently acting as a constraint that helps me keep characters simple. Adrian will be very small within the composition and the image will not work if he is too detailed, this technique will hopefully help me to develop a character that communicates his personality without too many unnecessary details. Speaking of overcomplicating I think that might be what I'm doing with this explanation. Basically I am going to continue to experiment and develop the characters and try them out in compositions along the way to see what works. I want the cover to be fun, bright and eye catching.