Beauty and the Beast- Development

I had created my idea; a rapper who smokes a lot of weed and isn't nice to his adoring fans was rude to his dealer. His dealer had had enough of being treat that way so gave his customer some bad weed. This bad weed turned the rapper into a beast! The beauty character in this story is a young, teenage "fangirl" who is heavily influenced by her idols. One of which happens to be the rapper. The only way the beast can undo the effects of the bad weed is to change his ways and realise how influential he is and how damaging that can be if he carries on acting and treating people in a bad way. 

I then tried to think of what makes a fangirl a fangirl. I tried doing some research and all I found was screaming, crying teenage girls reaching out towards their idol. So since that was not new information I tried to think of what the typical teenage girl looks like these days. Short skirts, crop tops, lots of skin showing; these were all attributes of a teenage girl. 

So the next step I took was to do some sketches of possible outfits that my "beauty" character could wear. 

Beauty and the Beast Brief- Sketches and Research

I started off sketching some body shapes and sizes, mainly for the Beast character. I tried to think of different variations in size and build that could best represent him being "beastly".

I then focused more on them separately. 

I settled on these designs for the outline of my characters. 

After showing my lecturer these sketches they pointed out I had wasted a lot of time doing these sketches and was no further forward and still had no idea of what my background story was for these characters. 

I had already done enough research and from watching the Disney version while growing up, I knew the story like the back of my hand. So I needed to just think solely about the characters and what made them the way they are. 

It was suggested to me that I look into influential singers or "pop stars" these days that are very influential to young minds but not in a positive way. I researched into Justin Bieber but really don't like him so had a think about someone else I could use as influence. 

I chose to look into Wiz Khalifa. He is a "rapper" who smokes a lot of weed, covered in tattoos and could be seen a bit of a bad boy. I personally know how much a pop singer or rapper can influence teenagers so thought this would be an excellent story for my characters. 

Dreamworks Brief

As part of our Concept Art Practice module we had a visit from Shelly Page from Dreamworks who gave us a brief to work on. She gave us a list of different characters to choose from and our job was to pick on and redesign that character in a different time period or setting. I chose Beauty and the Beast. 

I looked a lot online for visual references but kept going back to Disney's version of the story for a lot of my reference. 

I did try to think of a clever and different way to tell the story but failed. I was struggling to come up with ideas because I was missing the point of the story and was looking for an ugly character and a beautiful character rather than a beautiful person trapped in an ugly persons body. I was looking at examples like Shrek and Fiona (when she was human) and Quasimodo and Esmerelda. After having this pointed out to me I realised I had too many ideas or references and needed to narrow my searches. 

That is why I settled on the Disney version as my main reference. 

Lower City Final Design

Monk Development and Final design

I was finally happy with this design as it had smoother lines and the character clearly had an "S" shape to it which made it look more appealing and like it had more character.

Monk Designs

I had previously drawn out some designs for the monk character but wasn't happy with any of the designs. I started again and below are my sketches and development. 

After doing some initial ideas and more development work I still wasn't happy with my final drawing so knew it needed to be developed further. 

Gang Final Pieces