So last week I began the first character project of second year. I started a little later than some as the beginning of this project overlapped with the end of the sentry turret project, but that hasn't seemed to upset things much. The project brief is fairly open ended, with the only official requirements being that my pair of characters have to fit the theme of dichotomy.
"Design a pair of characters which work well together and clearly belong in the same world; whilst visually demonstrating their contrasts in as many ways as possible. Both characters must have a clear, recognisable connection with storytelling potential."
I decided to set a theme for myself of "Fire and Ice." This would give me a certain level of direction in this project to go along with all of this freedom. I started as always with some mind map notes and several mood boards, looking into fashion, art style, colour and interesting body types for my duo. After Mind mapping I decided that I wanted fire to either be a large aggressive character to fit the fierceness of fire, or in contrast a very calm and serine character, similar to a candle flame. For ice I wanted a thin, character with a jagged silhouette resembling an icicle. Since I tend to be lacking when it comes to dressing my characters I also took out a few fashion books for inspiration. with a good amount of reference and an idea of where I wanted to go with my duo I began thumbnailing.
I found in the sentry turret project that making a bash kit, or relying purely on block shape silhouettes isn't something that worked well for me, so instead this time round I went back to my regular method of thumb nailing. I also decided early in this project that the majority of my concepting would be done in my sketchbook, as I've found that I am a lot more fluid with my drawing and generally produce better work when I start off that way.
I picked the strongest thumbnails, paired them up, then began to put some faces to these thumbnails to build up my character a bit more.
"Design a pair of characters which work well together and clearly belong in the same world; whilst visually demonstrating their contrasts in as many ways as possible. Both characters must have a clear, recognisable connection with storytelling potential."
I decided to set a theme for myself of "Fire and Ice." This would give me a certain level of direction in this project to go along with all of this freedom. I started as always with some mind map notes and several mood boards, looking into fashion, art style, colour and interesting body types for my duo. After Mind mapping I decided that I wanted fire to either be a large aggressive character to fit the fierceness of fire, or in contrast a very calm and serine character, similar to a candle flame. For ice I wanted a thin, character with a jagged silhouette resembling an icicle. Since I tend to be lacking when it comes to dressing my characters I also took out a few fashion books for inspiration. with a good amount of reference and an idea of where I wanted to go with my duo I began thumbnailing.
From there I just kept going, matching bodies with faces, and by Thursday I had a line up that I was fairly happy with. On the Friday I had to present my current work for feedback, unfortunately there wasn't much I could take away from the session and I felt I did not get the same level of feedback that others who present before me may have gotten (damn being last on the register.)
Regardless I kept pushing my designs, Inspired by the "Art of Kung Fu Panda 2"book, specifically the art of Nicolas Marlet, I pushed the overall shapes of my characters and created a line up or varied characters to pick from. The goal for next week is to narrow down 2 designs to take into the orthographic drawings and later and 3d.
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| The Art of Kung Fu Panda 2, "Po" |
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| As I'm pretty chuffed with how this turned out, I'm going to go ahead and make this my picture of the week =) |
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