My Own Character Development Sketches

As the concept artists had for films such as "Brave", "the Incredibles" and "How to Train Your Dragon", I drew some sketches of character designs of characters that could star in the fictitious film I was planning to do concept art for. 

This here is Blue, a character of mine who has been evolving over a number of years, and I have decided to develop further in order to involve him in my work for Unit 4:

This is Ninty (who was drawn on notebook paper during one of my philosophy lessons):

I really wanted to have a specific kind of look to Blue's face shape.  It was surprisingly tough to give it the shape and look that I wanted.  Here are just a select few of the many experimentation doodles it took to eventually achieve the result I wanted (the simple, most abstract doodles in the picture below purposefully exaggerate the kind of look I wanted his face to have in an attempt to help me figure out how to draw what I wanted):

Eventually I managed to produce a look that I was happy with:

To practice character drawing and development, I drew a couple of (very) rough doodles of what my graphics teacher and myself might look like if we were to appear in an "American Elf" comic. Sir is there because he told me that he thought he would be a half-human, half-border collie, and that sounded entertaining to draw. 

I am an imp.

Coming up with a title for the film

When attempting to think of a title for my ficticious film, at first I considered something along the lines of the expression "when imagination comes to life", due to the fact that the plot is about characters who are effectively from a fantasy novel - fabrications of a young aspiring writer, or at least that is what they appear to be on the face of it.  However, similar to the upcoming Pixar film "Brave", what I really wanted a title that summed up the theme of the film in a single word.  Using a thesaurus, I made a mind map of ideas and notes in order to help me develop and solidify my idea of what the title could be, and hopefully reach a point where I found one that I was pleased with:

 

However, I didn't come up with anything that I was pleased enough with to use.  So, I decided to change my perspective and focus on a different aspect of the story.  Because the characters from the magical world have to convince the author both that they are real and of the damage and distruction she is causing in their world, and how if she ends her series of novels in the terrible and apocalyptic way that she plans to, I decided to try to think of words and titles that relate to this:

 

I decided to go for the title, "Epiphany".

I decided to go for this title for various reasons.  Firstly, there are epiphanies happening all over the place throughout the story - the epiphany that who or what it is that is writing the scrolls, depicting the past and prescribing the future, is not an order of clairvoyant ancients or an omniscient and omnipotent god, but a young, aspiring author: a person who has opinions and feelings, which means that there may be a chance that if they can somehow get through to their author, then they can change their predestined cataclysmic fate; the epiphany that the characters have when they see their author for the first time, without needing further investigation they have an innate knowledge deep down within them that it is indeed the person whom they are looking at that is their author; the epiphany that the author has when she sees her characters up close for the first time that they are not actors but are indeed the characters she had, or thought she had, invented from her imagination, right there, real and in person - so I feel that the title "Epiphany" it is relevant.  Furthermore, I feel it has a dramatic and epic sound to it that suits the atmosphere of the film. 

Plasticine Model of Character: Blue the Nymph

Progress Photos

 

Complete

 

Here are some sketches I drew based on the model:

Evaluation

Although not a single specific piece, a consistent aspect of Unit 4 that I have refined over the course of the unit is my character, Blue.  From the beginning Blue has been a key element to the overall development to my final piece, and indeed co-starring in the final piece itself.  The initial sketch of Blue put on my blog is arguably quite different from his design as seen in the final piece.  

After I first drew him for Unit 4, I realised that I wanted to distance his design from a "cookie-cutter" anime or manga character, particularly in the shape of his face, which I eagerly sought to make longer, thinner, with somewhat more defined cheekbones, and generally more unique and recognisable.  So I spent some time drawing and redrawing a simplified version of his face until I came up with a result I was happy with.  I still feel I had not quite achieved the look I had in mind at that point, but I was still pleased with what I had come up with. 

Although previously I had a general idea of what kind of clothes Blue wears, I feel I established a trademark outfit for him when I created the plasticine model of him.  This model also helped establish his facial structure and hairstyle both in my mind and in future drawings of him, as well as help me arrange the pose he would make in the final piece.  By and large it was the point where I felt I had truly achieved the face shape I strived to give him. 

Overall Blue has been both a constant component to the unit as well as the one that has developed the furthest.  I feel pleased with the progress I made on him in his look and feel happy with his current design. 

Developing ideas for final piece - thumbnails and very rough sketches

For my final piece, I plan to do a piece of concept art or a movie poster that revolves around a scene in my fictitious film, "Epiphany", which will involve a group of my characters (found in the second half of this blogpost) who I have been developing.

Luke Pearson-inspired stuff and other things

Here is a picture I did of Hilda and Twig from Luke Pearson's 'Hildafolk', playing.

Here is a panel by Luke Pearson from his sequel to 'Hildafolk': 'Hilda and the Midnight Giant'. His scenery and environments tend to be inspired by the Scandinavian countryside, which is a similar look and feel to what I would like the fantasy world involved within the storyline of what I plan to be my final piece would be like.  So, I drew an A4-sized artist's copy of the panel's background/scenery.

Here is an original piece, inspired by 'Hildafolk' and a sort-of imitation of Pearson's style, of my brownie character, Ninty.

Dinopopolous

This is the front cover of 'Dinopopolous' by Nick Edwards:

After reading 'Dinopopolous', I decided to draw a character inspired by the artist's style that I might use if I were to create a similar kind of comic/story and with a similar kind of tone to this comic book: 

This guy here just popped into my head one day.  He is kind of like what Blue (one of my characters, as featured in this post) might look like if he were more of a typical 'bad guy'.  (That being said, he is a separate character from Blue).

Hildafolk Case Study - Progress