What I did
In this brief, my task was to create a story and model sheets for a set of characters, who's appearance may have been affected by their past/backstories.
My own story was about a little girl, only 18 months old, whos parents had recently died in a car accident. Now, oblivious to everything that has happened, she has to live with her much older brother, who can barely look after himself, never mind his little sister, and she begins to explore her new surroundings, with her 2 imaginary friends, one male and the other female, like the natural adventure seeker she is. Of course as she is a baby, she does get herself into mischief whilst on her adventures, but as the brother is asleep, it is the imaginary friends job to keep her out of harms way, and to try and get her back in to her crib. Once the imaginary characters achieve their goal, after quite a lot of shape shifting into multiple figures and animals, an ability the do possess, they rush around the messy flat, attempting to clean away all the rubbish, so that it is a good environment for the baby, and one of them decides to whisper something into the sleeping brothers ear. As the brother wakes up, he has found a new confidence in himself, he knows he can look after himself and his baby sister, as he only wants the best for her, and he can feel the presence of something or someone watching over him, so he knows he can do it. As the brother strokes his little sisters head as she sleeps, the shot then pans into a photo of the siblings deceased parents, and the audience should notice a resemblance between them and the imaginary friends.
This story is the more developed version of my original concept, mostly because of the changes I had made to the appearance of the imaginary friends, throughout this process. As I developed their appearance, their details in the story had changed too, for instance, I did originally want the parents to be wearing masks as to disguise their identities, but I didn't feel the concept was imaginative enough to be something the daughter would have created in her mind, so I transformed the characters into shape shifting blobs, that have the ability to become anything which could help their daughter through any situation she might find herself in.
Although I was originally going to create model sheets for each of the characters, I realised this would have been so much work to do, in so little time, so I decided to just focus on the two imaginary characters, as I felt they would be the most interesting and I could do the most with them.
Research
Starting this project, with the belief that I would be creating human characters, I began looking for artists with styles that I felt would best fit my characters personality. For my male character, I had instantly thought of Jamie Hewlett. His creation of the characters '2D' and 'Murdoc' for the band Gorillaz, were the ideal look that I had wanted for my character, if the two were morphed into one. Hewlett was definitely an artist I wanted to take inspiration from, however I felt his style would possibly be too harsh for my younger female character, so I started looking for another artist with a similar style but with a softer approach, this is when I came across Anna Cattish. When I look at her characters they make me think of the Bratz dolls I had when I was younger, this is due to how big her characters heads are compared to their bodies, however they do still look proportionate. This style I felt would fit my little girl character more as the head size would make her look more younger and it would also add more femininity as apposed to Jamie Hewlett's style.
Knowing that I would eventually want to animate my story, I tried to think of ways in which I could do this yet still keep it simplistic, as I'm not too confident with animating yet, but I do need to learn in order to gain more confidence. So I started thinking of animations that I have seen with minimal movement, and it had made me remember the cut scenes from Alice: Madness Returns, which was designed by Spicy Horse Games. These animations were created in a paper cut puppet style, the bodies would move as if they had butterfly clips inserted into the joints, however these were not visible. So knowing that I wanted to use this style of animating, I thought of how I could create my animation in cinema 4D, using multiple assets that I will eventually create.
Moving away from the thought of animating, I started thinking about the appearance of my characters once again. Although I liked the thought of using Jamie Hewlett and Anna Cattish's style for my human characters, I still wanted to broaden my research so that I would not limit myself, and I also wanted to experiment with working towards a younger audience, as its not something I've ever really tried before. So doing this, I found artists from pictoplasma, and used artists who I already followed on Instagram, I had chose to research Rob Flowers, Kristin Askland, Mori Raito, You Jung Byun, Ton Mak - Flabjacks, Louise Rosenkrands - Miss Lotion, Fran Meneses and Karl J Mountford.
From this enormous list, although each artist influenced me and my work in different ways, the only artists who I believe have visibly inspired my final designs were Mori Raito, Rob Flowers and Louise Rosenkrands. From these artists, I have took inspiration from their choice in colour palettes, the boldness in their creations, and I have included textures of traditional mediums into my digital designs, these are all factors in which I felt would help my designs have more appeal to a younger audience as the piece is not flat and its filled with bold and bright colours.
Although it only looks as if I have taken inspiration from these three artists, I believe I will consider incorporating more of the other styles in my next project, when I start to develop my characters and story more, as I begin the animating process.
Strengths
During this process I feel I have worked well when experimenting digitally. As I was trying to incorporate more textures of traditional mediums in my designs, I had to play around with a lot of different textured brushes. Although I did attempt to make my own, I did not have enough time to tweak and perfect it to the style I had wanted, so I took the initiative and downloaded a few free sets of different brushes of different mediums i.e. paint, pastel, chalk etc, and I started to play around to find which one worked best with me, I ended up choosing a chalk textured brush.
In this project I felt I had also worked well with my time management, I was constantly making sure that I was on track and had everything complete within a certain time frame. It did at times limit my amount of experimentation, however I am still proud of my final outcomes, and I was very happy with the fact that I was not too rushed or too stressed, when it came to handing it.
my ability to problem solve my characters body types
Weaknesses
My main weakness with this project, was figuring out my characters style and body shapes. From the get go, I had drawn out some characters, then I had became stuck with that set style; every time I would try to redraw them, they would end up the same, so I became very frustrated with myself. I did eventually solve this problem by creating the characters from scratch, but with the designs following, I started struggling more with proportions, and my imaginary friends would not look as imaginative as I had wanted. This had resulted in just focusing on the imaginary friends, and I ended up making them simplistic and moldable blob shapes, almost symbolising pieces of clay, which would then morph into their character dynamics, the adaptations that would allow them to help the little girl through any situation, such as birds, big squids or even two furbies, as to distract the child and draw her attention to them.
Future Improvements
In future projects, I do want to develop my digital skills more. When I have my more time, I will create my own textured brushes and use them, rather than the ones I had downloaded.
As I do like the end product from this project, I also want to try designing more pieces that fit a younger audiences more often. I feel it will broaden the range of work within my portfolio, as I definitely do not feel I have enough child oriented designs.
The final thing that I want to do in future projects, is working with traditional mediums, so far in this course, I have only created digital based final pieces, so at least once before the course ends, I do want to create a final design which was created by hand and not refined in illustrator or photoshop, like I have in the past.
In this brief, my task was to create a story and model sheets for a set of characters, who's appearance may have been affected by their past/backstories.
My own story was about a little girl, only 18 months old, whos parents had recently died in a car accident. Now, oblivious to everything that has happened, she has to live with her much older brother, who can barely look after himself, never mind his little sister, and she begins to explore her new surroundings, with her 2 imaginary friends, one male and the other female, like the natural adventure seeker she is. Of course as she is a baby, she does get herself into mischief whilst on her adventures, but as the brother is asleep, it is the imaginary friends job to keep her out of harms way, and to try and get her back in to her crib. Once the imaginary characters achieve their goal, after quite a lot of shape shifting into multiple figures and animals, an ability the do possess, they rush around the messy flat, attempting to clean away all the rubbish, so that it is a good environment for the baby, and one of them decides to whisper something into the sleeping brothers ear. As the brother wakes up, he has found a new confidence in himself, he knows he can look after himself and his baby sister, as he only wants the best for her, and he can feel the presence of something or someone watching over him, so he knows he can do it. As the brother strokes his little sisters head as she sleeps, the shot then pans into a photo of the siblings deceased parents, and the audience should notice a resemblance between them and the imaginary friends.This story is the more developed version of my original concept, mostly because of the changes I had made to the appearance of the imaginary friends, throughout this process. As I developed their appearance, their details in the story had changed too, for instance, I did originally want the parents to be wearing masks as to disguise their identities, but I didn't feel the concept was imaginative enough to be something the daughter would have created in her mind, so I transformed the characters into shape shifting blobs, that have the ability to become anything which could help their daughter through any situation she might find herself in.
Although I was originally going to create model sheets for each of the characters, I realised this would have been so much work to do, in so little time, so I decided to just focus on the two imaginary characters, as I felt they would be the most interesting and I could do the most with them.
Research
Starting this project, with the belief that I would be creating human characters, I began looking for artists with styles that I felt would best fit my characters personality. For my male character, I had instantly thought of Jamie Hewlett. His creation of the characters '2D' and 'Murdoc' for the band Gorillaz, were the ideal look that I had wanted for my character, if the two were morphed into one. Hewlett was definitely an artist I wanted to take inspiration from, however I felt his style would possibly be too harsh for my younger female character, so I started looking for another artist with a similar style but with a softer approach, this is when I came across Anna Cattish. When I look at her characters they make me think of the Bratz dolls I had when I was younger, this is due to how big her characters heads are compared to their bodies, however they do still look proportionate. This style I felt would fit my little girl character more as the head size would make her look more younger and it would also add more femininity as apposed to Jamie Hewlett's style.
Knowing that I would eventually want to animate my story, I tried to think of ways in which I could do this yet still keep it simplistic, as I'm not too confident with animating yet, but I do need to learn in order to gain more confidence. So I started thinking of animations that I have seen with minimal movement, and it had made me remember the cut scenes from Alice: Madness Returns, which was designed by Spicy Horse Games. These animations were created in a paper cut puppet style, the bodies would move as if they had butterfly clips inserted into the joints, however these were not visible. So knowing that I wanted to use this style of animating, I thought of how I could create my animation in cinema 4D, using multiple assets that I will eventually create.
Moving away from the thought of animating, I started thinking about the appearance of my characters once again. Although I liked the thought of using Jamie Hewlett and Anna Cattish's style for my human characters, I still wanted to broaden my research so that I would not limit myself, and I also wanted to experiment with working towards a younger audience, as its not something I've ever really tried before. So doing this, I found artists from pictoplasma, and used artists who I already followed on Instagram, I had chose to research Rob Flowers, Kristin Askland, Mori Raito, You Jung Byun, Ton Mak - Flabjacks, Louise Rosenkrands - Miss Lotion, Fran Meneses and Karl J Mountford.From this enormous list, although each artist influenced me and my work in different ways, the only artists who I believe have visibly inspired my final designs were Mori Raito, Rob Flowers and Louise Rosenkrands. From these artists, I have took inspiration from their choice in colour palettes, the boldness in their creations, and I have included textures of traditional mediums into my digital designs, these are all factors in which I felt would help my designs have more appeal to a younger audience as the piece is not flat and its filled with bold and bright colours.
Although it only looks as if I have taken inspiration from these three artists, I believe I will consider incorporating more of the other styles in my next project, when I start to develop my characters and story more, as I begin the animating process.
Strengths
During this process I feel I have worked well when experimenting digitally. As I was trying to incorporate more textures of traditional mediums in my designs, I had to play around with a lot of different textured brushes. Although I did attempt to make my own, I did not have enough time to tweak and perfect it to the style I had wanted, so I took the initiative and downloaded a few free sets of different brushes of different mediums i.e. paint, pastel, chalk etc, and I started to play around to find which one worked best with me, I ended up choosing a chalk textured brush.
In this project I felt I had also worked well with my time management, I was constantly making sure that I was on track and had everything complete within a certain time frame. It did at times limit my amount of experimentation, however I am still proud of my final outcomes, and I was very happy with the fact that I was not too rushed or too stressed, when it came to handing it.
my ability to problem solve my characters body types
Weaknesses
My main weakness with this project, was figuring out my characters style and body shapes. From the get go, I had drawn out some characters, then I had became stuck with that set style; every time I would try to redraw them, they would end up the same, so I became very frustrated with myself. I did eventually solve this problem by creating the characters from scratch, but with the designs following, I started struggling more with proportions, and my imaginary friends would not look as imaginative as I had wanted. This had resulted in just focusing on the imaginary friends, and I ended up making them simplistic and moldable blob shapes, almost symbolising pieces of clay, which would then morph into their character dynamics, the adaptations that would allow them to help the little girl through any situation, such as birds, big squids or even two furbies, as to distract the child and draw her attention to them.
Future Improvements
In future projects, I do want to develop my digital skills more. When I have my more time, I will create my own textured brushes and use them, rather than the ones I had downloaded.
As I do like the end product from this project, I also want to try designing more pieces that fit a younger audiences more often. I feel it will broaden the range of work within my portfolio, as I definitely do not feel I have enough child oriented designs.The final thing that I want to do in future projects, is working with traditional mediums, so far in this course, I have only created digital based final pieces, so at least once before the course ends, I do want to create a final design which was created by hand and not refined in illustrator or photoshop, like I have in the past.
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