Monday 15 April 2013

Character Design - Part II: "Taste" by Roald Dahl

    Our final design assignment was to interpret and design two characters from Roald Dahl's short story "Taste". The man is a genius with words! Just thought I'd mention it, in case you didn't know already.

    Anyway, I opted for Margaret Schofield and the old housemaid. I wanted to challenge myself by designing two female characters that are of different ages, personalities and social status. It was really tough! I had a hard time getting started.

    Because I'm still mostly a writer at heart I decided to take an approach I'd learned in Lawrence's first design class, which is "words first, gimme some poetry!" So here's what I came up with for Margaret:

"The only part of her face that did not recede distastefully from whatever was in front of her was her lips; twisted into a perpetual starburst of disapproval protruding towards the world."
    That "starburst lips" idea is what became her defining characteristic to me, as well as her being tall and imposing: she has no choice physically but to look down on people all the time!  So the brainstorming began. (The ticks indicate which designs Julia encouraged me to pursue further.)


      I played randomly with the lasso tool and textures/colours in Photoshop, the result of which Julia really liked. She asked me to rework it into a younger, more fashionable version and combine it with a combination of two face design I'd done. (Neither of which I liked, but Julia definitely had the better eye here!)

    And this is my final result for Margaret. (Click to admire the texture of her skin!) I'm very pleased with the result, although maybe the middle pose is just a bit too lovely for her character. This is a style I've been wanting to explore for a long time! It was a lot of fun to do once I got a grip on the technique.

    The second character, the Housemaid, gave me a lot of trouble and ultimately the design could have been pushed even further, but I still like the result. She's not really meant to be placed in front of stark white backgrounds, though.


    I made the left pose in a bit of a hurry (deadline!) so there are definite continuity issues between the designs but I like to think that, given the time, I would have been able to give her some more facial expressions like Margaret.

   Whew, this was a long post! I like keeping track of my progress though, not just end results. To sum it up I got a lot braver during this class and I freed up my creative process. There's a project I have in mind that I just might tackle in the future, now that I've learned so much about the design process. If it ever gets to anything I'll post here.

Sunday 14 April 2013

Character Design - Part I: "Dr Frankenstein's Experimental Pet Shop"

    The past week we were introduced to new ways of generating ideas for character design and how to streamline those ideas into a finished concept for a character. It was lots of hard work and at times I felt frustrated over how stuck I am sometimes in artistic habits. Ultimately, though, I think I learned a lot and am excited to tackle new design challenges.

    There was an assignment that asked us to design two pets for "Dr Frankenstein's Experimental Pet Shop" in a photocollage style. I created the Frilled Dogfish and the Split-Tongued Splatterpurse, complete with Latin names, though I probably broke all grammar conventions. Click to read the descriptions!



      I'll add some details of my progress on the final assignment, so they'll get a separate post :)