When designing characters you have to think carefully about what kind of context that character will be in; for example games, animation, live action etc.
When designing a brief for a game, the artists would need to think about who the target audience was and what style of game it was. Was it for young children? For teenagers and young adults? Was it a war game or a puzzle game? All of these factors have a huge influence on what the artwork will need to look like. A puzzle game that is aimed at young children will need to be bright, colourful, have simple shapes and simple characters that look fun, friendly and entertaining. A war game that is aimed at an older audience can have dark environments, deadly weapons, heavy armour on the characters as well as dangerous characters.
Designing a character for a live action film can be quite an easy job. If it is an action movie that is expected to be a big hit and therefore the director has a specific popular actor/actress in mind this can make the designing job a lot easier. You would then have the character already alive and moving. You would just need to design a costume or extra accessories like a muscle suit or tentacles etc. if it was for a scifi film. You would already have your base for the character which is why this would be an easy job compared to designing a character from scratch.
When designing a character for animation you have to be very aware of the intended style of the finished animation. If the animation is going to be quite realistic looking then a cute little character with unrealistic body proportions that looks very cartoony wouldn't be suitable. However if the brief asks for a very cartoony style that is suitable for very young children then that would be the perfect character. Designing characters for animation can be very difficult as there could be so many different styles and looks that the client could be after. The characters would also need to be easy to use in the style of animation, whether it be 2D or 3D, you would need to design a suitable character that would be good to watch and believable but also easy for the animators to use.
As I have completed an Animation degree I have this advantage of knowing how difficult it can be to animate a character that simply doesn't work well for certain movements. This means that when I come to design a character that is for an animation brief, I can keep in mind how hard or easy I need to make it for the animators.
2. Demonstrate a comprehensive and critical understanding of techniques and methods appropriate to the chosen area of design
To create my Blue Beetle character, I used several techniques over the course of the module to create a suitable character design. Knowing the design and development process is important in a studio environment, I made sure that I stuck to a similar process as practice for when I could be in that situation.
After plenty of research and collecting references, the first stage was drawing out some initial designs.
I drew the initial designs out in pencil and pen on paper. I was looking at different ways to draw the masks or hats. These were not successful or helpful at all so I started again. The initial design stage is very important for professionals to sketch down so that they can show other members of their team their ideas and share thoughts and get feedback to see if they are going down the right path. For me at this stage I showed my classmates and lecturer and they helped me like colleges would in a studio.
From these drawings I obviously still didn't know what my finial character was going to look like and these drawings alone are not detailed or drawn well enough. The second attempt initial designs were drawn out on Photoshop rather roughly.
A design sheet was drawn out in Photoshop to try get a better idea of what the character could look like. This was a step forward from the last sheet and much more successful in showing not only different outfits that the character could wear, but in showing off what the personality of the character was going to be.
I decided that I couldn't sketch the character as well in Photoshop as I could on paper so switched back to traditional. The first hand drawn sketch I did was too stiff and I felt that it didn't show enough personality or show his sidekick well enough. So I drew another one with him twisted to the side and thought this was much more successful.
Above is the finished design drawn and coloured in Photoshop. I feel that I used a number of different techniques and methods to create this artwork and realised when some of them were not as successful. A big part of creating work for a brief in a studio will be trying out different looks and ideas and not all of them will be successful, as i found out with this brief; it can take a while to find an idea that works and can take using a different program to be able to create a drawing that looks professional and suitable to what the client wants.
3. Act autonomously in the research and synthesis of visual materials to support and inform the creation of original concepts
Throughout the whole project I am responsible for the amount of work I produce and for the time I have to complete that task. Outside of university I have to plan my time carefully to make sure I have enough time for each stage in the project. If one task takes longer than I had planned, then I have to work out how I can make up time further along the line and make sure that it won't affect my work flow too much. The research stage at the beginning of the project should not take much time at all, I can't afford to spend too long finding reference images when I need to be starting my project.
The images shown below are a collection of visual references that I collected before starting the creation of my gang for the "Excelsior" brief. I searched for images showing examples of the kind of style like would like to influence my own work, character references that could be useful and children's cartoons. I knew I wanted my city and their characters to be attractive for a younger audience so I felt like these were useful images to use as references.
Taken from The Lorax
Taken from The Cat in the Hat
Taken from Horton Hears a Who
Drawn by Art Heinemann
Artwork by Philip DeGuard
The above images are from Dr Seuss films or books and from Looney Tunes episodes. I looked at Dr Seuss's characters for inspiration for my own. I like how they are all crazy colours and shapes and don't look like they would fit into a normal world. I wanted to try do that with my own characters as well. I also looked at the Looney Tunes backgrounds for inspiration for my city. I wanted to find backgrounds that weren't always perspectively correct and where the colours weren't all green grass and blue skies. I want my characters to be living in a similar world to what the Looney Tunes character live in, so although I would like them to look a bit different, I need to find a middle ground. I need a background and environment that doesn't look too realistic and that would look natural for some wacky characters to be living in it.
The above images are two gang designs I created that I felt would fit into an environment like I talked about, and that were similar to Dr Seuss's style of characters but with my own twist to them.
4. Critically evaluate and defend your own work in the context of contemporary practice
The drawing above was done to show my gang in action as they terrorise the lower city. Although this is my favourite piece out of the whole project, I know that it is not perfect and that there are still things I could improve in the future. I feel like the left hand side of the drawing is really good, I love the old woman and her facial expression. I like the shape of her body and I also really like the background bookcase. I think it works really well and is faded enough to make it look like it is a background object but still is there in the picture enough to help set the scene. The right side of the drawing I am not so keen on and know that is the side I could have done more work on. The main gang member seems a bit stiff and isn't as curved as the woman character. It just doesn't look like an attractive character pose or drawing.
The image above of Looney Tunes characters shows how important a pose can be with a character art piece. If you look at every character you can see they all show some sort of expression or movement in their pose. They are all full of "S" curves even if some of them are very subtle. The lines all have different weights to them which I also did on my characters, so I would say this is a technique I should use more often in my future artwork since it is very successful in professional work and makes the work look more attractive and easy to understand as you can highlight weight or shade with the line work also.
The image below was drawn out and coloured in Photoshop. This was the first finished piece I completed for this project and if I were to redo it now I would do it completely different. I still have a lot to learn in Photoshop and this drawing makes that very obvious. The lines aren't as smooth as I would like them to be and I didn't know a way of making the background look even and straight. Because of this it looks like something isn't right and I know from feedback that this is easy to pick out and point out how it doesn't look correct.
In comparison, I completed the drawing below in Illustrator. The lines are smooth and even, they look bolder and have a natural fade in thickness thanks to pen pressure. Although this was my first time using Illustrator and I know there is a lot I don't know about the program and a lot still to learn, I can see how the drawing below came out a lot stronger than the one above because I chose to use a program that would help strengthen my style of drawing.
6. Operate ethically demonstrating critical understanding of the issues governing good practice
For a concept artist it is important to follow a good set of practises that ensure they maintain their integrity as an artist. Below are a few examples;
-Ask permission whenever using or referencing another artist's work. You would want people to ask permission to use your work, so it is only fair to ask when you would like to use someone's work.
-When referencing work, always remember to mention the source. If you do not reference the source of work you used then it might be mistaken for your own or make it look like you were trying to carry it off as your own which will give you a bad name in the art world and could the make it harder for you to get a job.
-Do not plagiarise, make all your work original. You want to be recognised for your own work, not someone else's.
-When working for a client, ask their permission to put the work you did for them on your website or on a public place. They paid for it so it belongs to them.
7. Demonstrate an independent and reflective approach to personal and professional development
Throughout the whole process of designing my monk and developing the idea I struggled to find a result that I was happy with. I knew myself that the designs that I was creating were not right and feedback from others confirmed that. Feedback proved to be very important and valued in this project as they helped me realise what I could do better and helped steer me in a direction that would greatly improve my work.
This was my first finished design for my monk character. It took me a couple of days of stepping away from this design and coming back to it to realise it didn't fit in with the rest of my work. I felt like I had taken a step in the right direction with my other work and had developed my style of drawing to a good place. But this character looked like my old way of drawing and didn't work with the rest of the project. Feedback confirmed my thoughts and helped me see that it had gone back to being very "Jointy" and full of limbs and edges. Whereas the rest of my drawings had "S" curves, expressions, flowing movements and just looked nicer to look at.
This was my final design. As you can see I took all the feedback and my self realisations and made the correct changes to the drawing to make it a lot more interesting to look at. This one looks like it is part of a story rather than just an illustration.
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