1. Briefly describe the
final outcome of your project and the progress you have made, and if
applicable how it differs from your original Project Proposal:
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My final outcomes consist
of character sheets and postcards. I feel like the progress has been up and
down as I would finally make a breakthrough but will then be at a halt due to
changing ideas constantly and procrastination. How it differs from my
original Project Proposal is that I was also meant to create a short comic
book however due to bad time management I wasn’t able to.
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2. What methods have you
used to show how your learning has effected your project eg FMP Blog/ FMP
Plan/ sketchbooks etc, and how has this helped with development of your work:
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Throughout my FMP, I have
been using my blog, action plan and sketchbook to show my development of my
work. My sketchbook has helped me with developing my ideas for my design
processes, as I was able to sketch out different design ideas and analyse
different work that went towards my final outcomes. FMP blog helped me with
clearing my mind about what worked, what didn’t and what I could improve on,
whilst talking how I felt about the project and it allowed me to show
development of my workflow. With the action plan, it helped me know what to
create at what time and how long I would give myself, basically it helped
with my time management.
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3. List the targets met
(from the original FMP Plan and any that were added later):
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- Complete character
design sheets and to create merchandises (postcards)
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4. Reflecting on your
overall final major project, please discuss any developments which have
contributed to the final outcome:
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Mainly my secondary
research of artists had mainly contributed to my final outcomes as I was able
to know the exact style I wanted and how it would look like with the line
art, colours etc. Also primary research like my photo shoot contributed to
the final outcomes as It allowed me to know how my character would look like
in my final outcomes
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5. Please state what
advice you received from others during your FMP, and discuss what you found
particularly useful: you should refer to group reviews, one-to-one tutorials
and feedback from evaluation groups
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Most of my advices came
from the group reviews which realty helped. I was given the advice to look at
environmental art and what I needed to do to help develop my work like taking
pictures, visiting exhibitions etc. From the one to one tutorials, I received
detailed advices which helped a lot as I was told about how would I would
portray the settings, the story of my characters and how they would link,
videos to look at that would help. I found them all very useful as they all
helped me progress with my FMP and allowed me to know where I was heading
with this project.
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6. Key points to take away
– things to change about my approach (give at least 2) eg improve time
management, what skills you have developed and how this will affect your
future course/career and things to continue doing and to build on (give at
least 2). What are you going to do next year?
(NOTE – you may find it
useful to refer to this document at the beginning of your next self managed
project.)
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Time management would
probably be the biggest key point to take away from all this as I wasn’t able
to create all the work I wanted to due to my poor time management. I would
also say primary research as I barely visited any exhibitions and most of my
source was from the internet so next time I would try to focus on more
primary research. This will affect my future course which is Illustration as
I know that I’ve have to show lots of development and visit galleries for
this course and for my career I know that I won’t be able to succeed if my
time management is poor. Next year I’ll be at Middlesex University, studying
Illustration.
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Evaluation
Postcard typography development
Although I came up with design ideas for my postcards, focused mainly on the character designs, I decided to also take the chance on looking towards the typography side to switch things up a bit. I knew I need to further develop my work and typography popped right up in my head so I went sketching. I first started of by drawing quick thumbnail sketches, where I was able to draw out different ideas for my typography, implementing my characters in them still by portraying each characters personality through typography.
Although I'm not a fan of typography as i find it very boring as I'm more of an Illustrator, I knew that focusing on typography for development would be a great choice to do as it would help widen my development and allow me to try out different things which i may or may not be comfortable doing. I decided to further develop the thumbnail sketches by first sketching out typography designs. Most of the designs came from myself whereas a couple came from the Dafont website and google images. I wanted the designs to be more personal for which is why most of them are from myself. I fount it quite fun doing this part as it allowed me to create typography that I like and allowed me to practice with typography as it isn't my strong suit. I tried it out using different mediums like my black brush pen, ink pens, felt tip pens, colouring pencils and pencil, which was vital as i needed to experiment with different tools to get a feel of what works best and what dosen't.
Overall the designs were actually really great and this allowed me to choose one with ease and develop even further. I chose to go the the word 'Crazy' as i was focusing on Emily's personality traits.
I decided to go with my brush pen design as i really loved the strokes and how it really helped portray the word 'crazy'. i went back to my initial thumbnail sketches of the postcard designs and chose some that I liked and developed my typography onto those which worked out really good as i was able to see how the postcards would come out and if i would like them or not and for the most part i liked the designs as they were powerful, eye catching and fun to do.
Overall I really enjoyed the whole process with these typography designs and developing them onto my postcard designs. It would be even better if i had developed them onto photoshop as I could have played with the colour of the text and background and maybe done more effects to make it look a lot more engaging.
Although I'm not a fan of typography as i find it very boring as I'm more of an Illustrator, I knew that focusing on typography for development would be a great choice to do as it would help widen my development and allow me to try out different things which i may or may not be comfortable doing. I decided to further develop the thumbnail sketches by first sketching out typography designs. Most of the designs came from myself whereas a couple came from the Dafont website and google images. I wanted the designs to be more personal for which is why most of them are from myself. I fount it quite fun doing this part as it allowed me to create typography that I like and allowed me to practice with typography as it isn't my strong suit. I tried it out using different mediums like my black brush pen, ink pens, felt tip pens, colouring pencils and pencil, which was vital as i needed to experiment with different tools to get a feel of what works best and what dosen't.
Overall the designs were actually really great and this allowed me to choose one with ease and develop even further. I chose to go the the word 'Crazy' as i was focusing on Emily's personality traits.
I decided to go with my brush pen design as i really loved the strokes and how it really helped portray the word 'crazy'. i went back to my initial thumbnail sketches of the postcard designs and chose some that I liked and developed my typography onto those which worked out really good as i was able to see how the postcards would come out and if i would like them or not and for the most part i liked the designs as they were powerful, eye catching and fun to do.
Overall I really enjoyed the whole process with these typography designs and developing them onto my postcard designs. It would be even better if i had developed them onto photoshop as I could have played with the colour of the text and background and maybe done more effects to make it look a lot more engaging.
Postcard Designs
I decided to look at making postcards as I still wanted to portray my characters whilst adding some environmental art to the scene. My main focus was making my characters link with their personalities even more and also adding the fact that they each have different powers, which also was meant to link back to their personalities.
First I began by doing some secondary research by looking at different designs that I was inspired by. I found this image from pinterest and I was instantly inspired due to the colour scheme. I saw how each character had a specific colour scheme, representing their tattoos and their personality through the use of colour and emotions seen through their facial expressions, e.g which the character at the bottom, her colour scheme is yellow and green, representing happiness due to the extent of yellow used in the artwork, whereas with the character in the middle, she has a anxious facial expression, linking with the colour blue representing sadness. I was inspired by this and knew that i could link this with my work in the same way to make it more eye-catching and have actual meaning instead of just having random designs that don't even work or link with the characters personalities.
I also liked the layout of the design as I like the close up of the characters, allowing us to focus more on the character whilst being drowned in with the colour in the background, keeping us involved with the artwork which was a very smart move that the artist made. As I wanted my characters to be the main focus, it would make sense to do close up designs of them however I was still keeping my options open.
I stumbled upon these amazing postcards called 'Line Friends' on Google, and was instantly drawn in with the unique artwork and how vibrant the colours were. I'm really envious of artists that are able to pull of such colours as they have a deep understanding of colour theory and how to make different colours work together, which can be seem through the artworks on the postcards. the colours are truly intriguing, warm and helps bring the artwork to life. i also like the line dependency as there are hardly any line art seem in the artworks as the colours and shapes help show the characters and the environment.
For the environmental art, i knew I needed reference for that, so I decided to go outside and take my own photos of nature. It was very calming, taking pictures of all the different plants and trees I saw, I was very intrigued by the vibrant colours i was getting due to it being a nice hot day when i took the photos.
After doing research I began sketching out ideas for my postcards. I started of by drawing lot's of thumbnail sketches to get all the ideas in my head out and i really wanted to do really well with these postcards as I was creating 4 postcards so I would be able to add detail. After all the thumbnail sketches, i chose one idea and expanded upon it. I started off by drawing different expressions of Paul, to get the right feel and emotion that I wanted to portray with his postcard. It was actually fun doing these quick expressive sketches as It allowed me to loosen up and simply sketch out ideas as before with the character designs, the sketches I did were still aimed on trying to look perfect and neat, which is what i shouldn't have been focusing on.
Afterwords, I chose the one that I liked the most and drew the layout of how I was going to form out the postcard design with a more detailed sketch of Paul and his environment. I then decided on what the colour scheme would be like to help connote his personality. Now it was getting to the fun but long part of actually making the design. My initial idea from my thumbnail changed whilst making Pauls postcard for which is why in my sketchbook, the development is for the final outcome as I went back to change on how i wanted it to be laid out.
During the process of my design, i began by doing a sketch of the design on Photoshop using my wacom tablet to do all the drawings that I have done digitally. After I would lower the opacity, creating a new layer and drawing ontop of the sketch layer, where I would do the finished lineart of the drawing. However due to the lineart curse, when I closed the sketch layer to see the lineart layer by itself, it looked terrible so I then decided to use the sketch drawing as the final drawing and continued rendering it to look more solid and clean .Then it came to colouring which I was excited about as I got to finally make my artwork pop out even more. I focused on getting the block colours before i added in effects. Once I was happy I moved onto adding the effects and I mainly used the 'Overlay' effect to create the bright vibrant colours seen on Pauls face and the plants I drew. I was very pleased with the way it was all coming out as the colours all worked well together and the designs were looking crisp and clean.
I simply used the same development process for the rest of my characters, bringing the characters to life by portraying their powers and personalities. Paul has the power to create anything he touches, Esther has super strength, Emily can fly and Mikhaela has the ability to shoot blue lasers from her eyes. I was extremely satisfied with the final outcomes of my postcards however due to my terrible time management, I wasn't able to make my short comic in time.
First I began by doing some secondary research by looking at different designs that I was inspired by. I found this image from pinterest and I was instantly inspired due to the colour scheme. I saw how each character had a specific colour scheme, representing their tattoos and their personality through the use of colour and emotions seen through their facial expressions, e.g which the character at the bottom, her colour scheme is yellow and green, representing happiness due to the extent of yellow used in the artwork, whereas with the character in the middle, she has a anxious facial expression, linking with the colour blue representing sadness. I was inspired by this and knew that i could link this with my work in the same way to make it more eye-catching and have actual meaning instead of just having random designs that don't even work or link with the characters personalities. I also liked the layout of the design as I like the close up of the characters, allowing us to focus more on the character whilst being drowned in with the colour in the background, keeping us involved with the artwork which was a very smart move that the artist made. As I wanted my characters to be the main focus, it would make sense to do close up designs of them however I was still keeping my options open.
For the environmental art, i knew I needed reference for that, so I decided to go outside and take my own photos of nature. It was very calming, taking pictures of all the different plants and trees I saw, I was very intrigued by the vibrant colours i was getting due to it being a nice hot day when i took the photos.After doing research I began sketching out ideas for my postcards. I started of by drawing lot's of thumbnail sketches to get all the ideas in my head out and i really wanted to do really well with these postcards as I was creating 4 postcards so I would be able to add detail. After all the thumbnail sketches, i chose one idea and expanded upon it. I started off by drawing different expressions of Paul, to get the right feel and emotion that I wanted to portray with his postcard. It was actually fun doing these quick expressive sketches as It allowed me to loosen up and simply sketch out ideas as before with the character designs, the sketches I did were still aimed on trying to look perfect and neat, which is what i shouldn't have been focusing on.
Afterwords, I chose the one that I liked the most and drew the layout of how I was going to form out the postcard design with a more detailed sketch of Paul and his environment. I then decided on what the colour scheme would be like to help connote his personality. Now it was getting to the fun but long part of actually making the design. My initial idea from my thumbnail changed whilst making Pauls postcard for which is why in my sketchbook, the development is for the final outcome as I went back to change on how i wanted it to be laid out.
During the process of my design, i began by doing a sketch of the design on Photoshop using my wacom tablet to do all the drawings that I have done digitally. After I would lower the opacity, creating a new layer and drawing ontop of the sketch layer, where I would do the finished lineart of the drawing. However due to the lineart curse, when I closed the sketch layer to see the lineart layer by itself, it looked terrible so I then decided to use the sketch drawing as the final drawing and continued rendering it to look more solid and clean .Then it came to colouring which I was excited about as I got to finally make my artwork pop out even more. I focused on getting the block colours before i added in effects. Once I was happy I moved onto adding the effects and I mainly used the 'Overlay' effect to create the bright vibrant colours seen on Pauls face and the plants I drew. I was very pleased with the way it was all coming out as the colours all worked well together and the designs were looking crisp and clean. 
I simply used the same development process for the rest of my characters, bringing the characters to life by portraying their powers and personalities. Paul has the power to create anything he touches, Esther has super strength, Emily can fly and Mikhaela has the ability to shoot blue lasers from her eyes. I was extremely satisfied with the final outcomes of my postcards however due to my terrible time management, I wasn't able to make my short comic in time.
Character design sheets
Since I finally finished Mikhaela's character sheet, i was able to know to finally know how to lay out my work and how to develop for my other characters. For each character I did which were Esther, Emily and Paul ( I decided to focus on only these four characters instead of the 5 characters and 2 villains due to time), Began by shektching out the different costume designs for each one, where I did 6 costume designs, sketching out how it'll look and then choosing one of them to develop.
Afterwords I drew the characters in different poses, relating to their personalities. I decided to not focus on drawing head shots as I already knew how it'll look and i would do that later when i develop it all digitally. I did their initial character design sheets on paper where i drew them in two poses.These sheets were meant to be my actual character design sheets which were meaning to be inked over and developed which i sort of did but did not aswell.
I ended up giving them different poses instead as I thought it would work best to give them a more simplified poses due to time however still make them look intriguing to look at. When developing them digitally, i used the same template that i did for Mikhaela and replicated them with the others.
Analysing my own work, I saw that for Esther, I had mixed feelings towards her final outcome as I liked how the face came out as this would be one of the main features that the audience will be looking at due to the expression and detail of the face. However I felt as though with the costume design, I made have needed to go into more detail with her design as it felt lacklustre due to the cool bland colours used. For improvements I would work on my colour scheme and try out more techniques when it comes to colouring as even the gradient tool that gives it the purple effect didn't help enough to draw out its full potential.
For Paul, I really liked how the outcome came out as i was loving the red, black, white and blue colour scheme and how it all works well together. I wanted the colours to have a mix of warm and cool to help make it stand out more for which is why the skin colour and colour red is vibrant and the trousers and purple gradient are cool. I think this was the right choice as it helped add balance to the outcome,like Esthers outcome.
I kept the layout the same as it was the right choice to make as the main focus was the characters so adding crazy designs to the character sheet wouldn't help and may drift the audiences attention away which isn't what I wanted.
For Emily, I was again full of mixed feelings. This was due to the fact that for the things I liked about it, were the lineart and colours for Emilys face. What I love about the lineart is how its thick and fluid, looking like Sarakpins artwork with some of my own style towards it. i could have made the lines more thicker for improvement as Sarakipins lineart tends to be a lot more thicker however I still like the outcome. Colour wise, I like the eye colour and how I coloured her hair, inclusing the lineart due to clipping too on photoshop to allow me to add colour to the lines. However again the colour shcme for her costume isn't that great to me now that I look at it properly as its too dark and bland, I should have made it more colourful due to it being inspired in the 80's.
Overall, i like how the final outcomes for my character design sheets came out. Creating these character sheets were one of the main highlights for this project as I was able to make work that I was truely interested in as I'm taking the illustration pathway for the future. Being able to create characters like I usualy do in my spare times was a great relief, however as this was my second time creating character sheets, I should have devoted more time into it to make it look more eye catching . Even though most of my time went into these character sheets, I know that i could have done alot better and could have developed them even further if I didn't waste time with how I wanted it to look like, changing my idea every second and just got down to it from the beginning .
Afterwords I drew the characters in different poses, relating to their personalities. I decided to not focus on drawing head shots as I already knew how it'll look and i would do that later when i develop it all digitally. I did their initial character design sheets on paper where i drew them in two poses.These sheets were meant to be my actual character design sheets which were meaning to be inked over and developed which i sort of did but did not aswell.
I ended up giving them different poses instead as I thought it would work best to give them a more simplified poses due to time however still make them look intriguing to look at. When developing them digitally, i used the same template that i did for Mikhaela and replicated them with the others.
Analysing my own work, I saw that for Esther, I had mixed feelings towards her final outcome as I liked how the face came out as this would be one of the main features that the audience will be looking at due to the expression and detail of the face. However I felt as though with the costume design, I made have needed to go into more detail with her design as it felt lacklustre due to the cool bland colours used. For improvements I would work on my colour scheme and try out more techniques when it comes to colouring as even the gradient tool that gives it the purple effect didn't help enough to draw out its full potential.
For Paul, I really liked how the outcome came out as i was loving the red, black, white and blue colour scheme and how it all works well together. I wanted the colours to have a mix of warm and cool to help make it stand out more for which is why the skin colour and colour red is vibrant and the trousers and purple gradient are cool. I think this was the right choice as it helped add balance to the outcome,like Esthers outcome.I kept the layout the same as it was the right choice to make as the main focus was the characters so adding crazy designs to the character sheet wouldn't help and may drift the audiences attention away which isn't what I wanted.
For Emily, I was again full of mixed feelings. This was due to the fact that for the things I liked about it, were the lineart and colours for Emilys face. What I love about the lineart is how its thick and fluid, looking like Sarakpins artwork with some of my own style towards it. i could have made the lines more thicker for improvement as Sarakipins lineart tends to be a lot more thicker however I still like the outcome. Colour wise, I like the eye colour and how I coloured her hair, inclusing the lineart due to clipping too on photoshop to allow me to add colour to the lines. However again the colour shcme for her costume isn't that great to me now that I look at it properly as its too dark and bland, I should have made it more colourful due to it being inspired in the 80's.
Overall, i like how the final outcomes for my character design sheets came out. Creating these character sheets were one of the main highlights for this project as I was able to make work that I was truely interested in as I'm taking the illustration pathway for the future. Being able to create characters like I usualy do in my spare times was a great relief, however as this was my second time creating character sheets, I should have devoted more time into it to make it look more eye catching . Even though most of my time went into these character sheets, I know that i could have done alot better and could have developed them even further if I didn't waste time with how I wanted it to look like, changing my idea every second and just got down to it from the beginning .
Character sheet development
I began by creating different thumbnail sketches of different character design sheets I could think of whilst looking at inspiration from Pinterest where I found many character design sheets. This was very useful as it allowed me to grasp on the key features with character design sheets which were the profiles, headshot and text. By using those three in a character sheet, it creates harmony and allows for the sheet to be very engaging towards the audience.
After I began looking at some fashion clothing that I could use for my clothing designs. As my theme was based o the 80's I began by drawing out some 80's fashion clothes which was very interesting and fun to do. I noticed how bright and colourful the clothing is in the 80's which helped me capture the personalities of my characters as some of them had a warm personality which could easily be portrayed through their clothing.I sketched out different designs, adding colour to them for development and to allow me to vision my ideas a lot better as I was able to grasp how the clothing would look like on the character if i chose to use that clothing or not.
I continued to do the costume designs for my four characters, Paul, Emily, Mikhaela and Esther. Once those were done I then went back to my layout designs to choose some that I like which could be developed even more as i knew how my characters would look. By doing these development drawings I could see how my character design sheets would look like and allowed me to see what works and what dosen't.
Overall, this process went to plan as I was able to start of with my inital ideas and develop them to the point where I felt comfortable on what choices I had to make, leading towards my final outcome.
Mikhaela character design sheet
My first character design sheet.This was the longest and most frustrating one when it came to development as this one was basically where I was able to do all the testings but was also the first so I kept changing a lot which left me in a continuous trap.
To begin with, using the artists I was previously inspired by, I began drawing headshots of Mikhaela in the different styles, testing to see which style I liked and this is where the problem started. I spend most of my time drawing and sketching ideas of how she would look and one minute I loved one style, the next minute I didn't like it and like another, just to change my mind and choose another style. As a perfectionist when it comes to drawing, I knew this would happen and it really impacted my workflow and time management as I spent too much time on this due to how unclear I was with what style to go with.
However I continued on and after doing some sketches I began focusing on the costume design which I decided to do digitally instead of traditionally as i wanted to show some development. I began by doing a drawing of Mikheala then adding clothings that i felt suited her and that she requested. I liked how the different outcomes came out and it was tough deciding which one to choose however I ended up choosing Mikhaela wearing Dungarees as that was the one she preferred the most and it did suit her personality.
Afterwords I did some more character sketches in my sketchbook where I was drawing her wearing her dungarees and doing doing poses and drawing headshots in a style inspired by Sarakipin. My main influence was Sarakipin with the style so I decided to finally choose her as my main inspiration for my character designs.
However for due to my perfectionism, I drifted away abit and drew Mikheala in my own style but it still had a hint of Sarakpin in it. I drew her on a seperate piece of paper for which was my character sheet. I drew two poses and head shots which I didn't like so I focused on the poses. I loves how the drawings of the poses came out as it was dynamic, fluid and didn't look too stiff.
I developed these digitally next and thats then I decided to go back to Sarakipins style for my character sheet design.i did try out a couple of other styles however they didn't work out and I was really struggling with wjhat style to draw but due to time I knew I didn't have forever to make a choice so I went with it and developed the drawing to create my character sheet. Once I finished drawing Mikhaela, I decides to add two head shots of her, showing different expressions that linked back to her personality to help develop my work and bring it more to life then added information about the character.
With the typography, I tried out different fonts however I ended up with knucklebones font that I got from the website 'dafont'. I really liked this font as it was a brush type and it worked well with my design.
i really liked how the final outcome came out due to the bold fluid strong lines and the colours and effects i used to get a gradient. This was all very time consuming so I have some doubts with whether or not i would even be able to create my comic now.
photoshoot
Next journey was for the fun and exciting part, photoshoot. With my characters, I wanted them to be real people as i wanted my story to be relatable of teenagers going on an adventure so I decided to use my fellow classmate friends. My aim was to focus on creating 5 main characters with two villains so I began by taking heads hots of each person i would use, then afterwords I did group photos to help portray the mood I was looking for. This was very fun to do, due to everyones reaction and the bloopers I got plus everyone did their part in portraying their character due to their body language, facial expressions and personalities.Costume design research
Although character design is vital, costume design takes a huge role in setting the mood in the artwork.
My main idea was to set my story in the 80's as i was inspired by the story from the Goonies and Stranger Things and wanted to create my own 80's theme story so I knew that I also had to do research on 80's fashion.
I was having trouble where to start for which is why I knew I could rely on Pinterest to help me. That website is glory grail of reference so I began my research there.
I began researching 80's fashion with men and women separately to gain an understanding the sort of stereotypical fashion they each had. I saw how with men, it was more about looking clean and retro with denim jeans and short sleeves shirts whilst with women it was more and colour and wearing Dungarees, skirts, and also again, denim jeans. I kept seeing a lot of denim in 80's fashion which was surprising as i thought it would mainly be about colour colour and more colour but fashion back then is kinda like our own fashion right now, mainly due to denim. I also noticed that a lot of the clothing was unisex in the 80's which was another surprise to me as you'd think back then they would want peoples dressing like their own sex but that wasn't the case which was nice as it allowed me to come up with more ideas on what my characters would wear.
After some more secondary research, I looked at the film called the Breakfast Club as it was set in the 80's and would really help with analysing fashion due to the fact what the characters were all stereotypical and their costumes helped portray that even more as you had the nerd, jock, outcast, pretty girl and rebel. Analysing each character, i noticed how with the nerd, he would dress up very clean and smart wearing black jumper and black shoes, the jock would wear a vest and denim jeans portraying his physique, the outcast would be wearing all black to portray their inner emotions, the pretty face would be wearing boots, earrings to portray their status and the rebel/criminal would be wearing boots as well, with a striped shirt and gloves to portray his anger. It was great use analysing these characters as it really helped a lot with how I would create costumes for my own characters to help portray their personalities.
I also looked out costume design in the Stranger Things however it was kinda tricky finding out what costume they were wearing and how it helped with their characteristics and personality but I tried anyways.
I began researching 80's fashion with men and women separately to gain an understanding the sort of stereotypical fashion they each had. I saw how with men, it was more about looking clean and retro with denim jeans and short sleeves shirts whilst with women it was more and colour and wearing Dungarees, skirts, and also again, denim jeans. I kept seeing a lot of denim in 80's fashion which was surprising as i thought it would mainly be about colour colour and more colour but fashion back then is kinda like our own fashion right now, mainly due to denim. I also noticed that a lot of the clothing was unisex in the 80's which was another surprise to me as you'd think back then they would want peoples dressing like their own sex but that wasn't the case which was nice as it allowed me to come up with more ideas on what my characters would wear.
After some more secondary research, I looked at the film called the Breakfast Club as it was set in the 80's and would really help with analysing fashion due to the fact what the characters were all stereotypical and their costumes helped portray that even more as you had the nerd, jock, outcast, pretty girl and rebel. Analysing each character, i noticed how with the nerd, he would dress up very clean and smart wearing black jumper and black shoes, the jock would wear a vest and denim jeans portraying his physique, the outcast would be wearing all black to portray their inner emotions, the pretty face would be wearing boots, earrings to portray their status and the rebel/criminal would be wearing boots as well, with a striped shirt and gloves to portray his anger. It was great use analysing these characters as it really helped a lot with how I would create costumes for my own characters to help portray their personalities.I also looked out costume design in the Stranger Things however it was kinda tricky finding out what costume they were wearing and how it helped with their characteristics and personality but I tried anyways.
Character research
As I got my story plot done and over with, my next focus was character design. I decided to create character design sheets to go towards my short comic. To start with this outcome, I began by looking at different artists that draw and create characters. My main focus when looking at different artists were to look at their art stlye, use of colour, technique, and the mood of the work. I looked at artists Sarakipin, Phobs, Inntia and Anthony Holden.
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| One of the artworks I analysed (Sarakipin) |
My first artist to look at was Sarakipin, I was in love with their style and decided to analyse their work even more. I looked at the colour scheme and saw how they tend to use alot of warm colour and how they use dynamic poses to help bring the artwork to life. Most charcaters would be drawn simply standing which looks too stuff and dull for which is why I loved how dynamic and fluid the movements were in the artwork. I also looked more into what I liked about the artwork due to the style, fluid strong strokes they used for the lineart etc. I enjoyed looking at different techniques artists used to layout and design characters in general because whilst looking at these examples, it highlighted a few key components of the character design process which were the layout , content and technique.
i had to keep asking myself why the artist chose to draw the characters in a specific way and how they got to that point which really helped open my eyes and see how the artworks consist of focusing towards whats being represented and the mood of the artwork, expressing the feel of it.
although I was focusing on character sheets, I mainly wanted to focus on the style that I would be going with as with the style, the main components are the use of lines and use of colours. As some artists would create artwork with strong bold lines whilst others would create artwork with lighter fluid lines and then when it came to colour, some artists would focus more on cell shading where they block up the colours whilst other artists would focus on blending the colours for which is why it was vital to explore more than one artist to see the different techniques being used.
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| One of the artworks i analysed (Phobs) |
I also looked at other artists like Phobs here for example. When analysing this artwork, as you could see there was a lack of colour however many artists do this in general where they colour in black and white (mainly grey for the midtones) so by looking at this, I spoke about the use of monochromatic colour. Colour theory was one of the main things I was looking at when analysing the different artists work as colour theory plays a huge role in how the mood of the characters come out. If I compared this to the previous artwork done by Sarakipin, you'll see how warm and cool colours clash in with each other and how which sarapikins artwork, it focused on a more analogous colour scheme (three colours side by side, in which case red, orange and yellow) whereas with Phobs, its more focused on monochromatic colour scheme. This would help imply how Sarakipins artwork is mainly focused with the colours, shapes, movement whereas Phobs main concern is the representation, expression and mood in the artwork.
Looking at these different character designs have given me deeper understanding on how lineart, colour and technique play a huge role in portraying what you want to the audience and has really helped me know how to start with my own process towards character design.
research week
The start of a very long journey that awaits my destiny. This week was basically about research and more research...with a dash of research. My theme is Adventure where I am exploring the different themes within adventure like characters, exploration, questing etc to help towards my outcome. My goal is by the end of this project to create a short comic book about my own adventure story. With this concept, I could begin looking at stories that and artworks that would inspire to towards my goal.
When exploring Adventure, I dwelled on all the sub genres that would link to it like such as Character, exploration, fantasy,fiction, psychological arousal and questing. I became by brainstorming each sub genre, thinking of words and ideas that could go towards my outcomes which was vital as I needed to know how the story was going to be like, how the characters personality were going to be like and how the mood and setting would be like e.g the timeline. This helped a lot with getting all the ideas down instead of it all in my head as i tend to forget a lot.
I began by looking at different graphic novels pages from the book 'Graphic novels: Stories to change your life' that inspired me, looking at their use of colour, composition, layout, art style and more of what I liked about each different work. This was incredibly useful to do as i was stuck on where to start for this project as I knew what artworks I wanted to create roughly but didn't know where to start to help develop these ideas and make it come to life. I got the idea to look at books from the library from one of my tutors which I thank alot as it got my motor running with this project.
I also looked at 'Hilda and the stone forest' which I was truly inspired by as I loved the artstyle, the warm vibrant colours they used and the composition as it all played together, bringing out the best from the comic book. All this research gave me a better understanding when it came to analysing artists work as I was able to see smaller details in their work and analyse all the different features they put into their work, conveying how it inspired me and why I like it.
This is why I knew that with all great comic books, they all start of as an idea which develops into a story and it then brought to life through storytelling in a illustrative way (with text). However I needed to look at stories in order to gain a deeper understanding for which is why, continuing on with my secondary research I looked upon the movie called 'The goonies' and the Netflix show ' Stranger Things'. The link between the two was that they were both based in the 80s.In my mind I already thought of setting like story in the 80s for which I'll get into more detail later however for now I focused on the story and the characters in the show. Analysing the characters, i wrote words that linked with their personalities which was easy for me as i have already watched the two shows/movies. I also wrote their plot down to be able to understand it more clearly.
This all led me to start plotting ideas for my own story so I began by writing any ideas that came to my head and also used primary research by asking others for their own ideas for an adventure story. After all this I then picked the ideas I liked and developed them. I research about creating your own stories and came out 'the seven basic plots' which spoke about the meta plot , overcoming the monster , rags of riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy and tragedy. Although this was all useful my main focus was with meta plot, basically the anticipation stage. I knew that if I was to create a comic I wouldn't be able to create the whole story as it takes a lot of time to do so however I knew that if I created one issue, focusing on the beginning of the story and the setup then it would be great. I continued on by choosing my final idea which was about a group of friends who enter a mysterious shop and must deliver back an item to someone before it gets into the wrong hands.
This week of research was very vital as I wanted to get my story plot done with so that I would know what to do when creating the characters for my story.
When exploring Adventure, I dwelled on all the sub genres that would link to it like such as Character, exploration, fantasy,fiction, psychological arousal and questing. I became by brainstorming each sub genre, thinking of words and ideas that could go towards my outcomes which was vital as I needed to know how the story was going to be like, how the characters personality were going to be like and how the mood and setting would be like e.g the timeline. This helped a lot with getting all the ideas down instead of it all in my head as i tend to forget a lot.
I began by looking at different graphic novels pages from the book 'Graphic novels: Stories to change your life' that inspired me, looking at their use of colour, composition, layout, art style and more of what I liked about each different work. This was incredibly useful to do as i was stuck on where to start for this project as I knew what artworks I wanted to create roughly but didn't know where to start to help develop these ideas and make it come to life. I got the idea to look at books from the library from one of my tutors which I thank alot as it got my motor running with this project.
I also looked at 'Hilda and the stone forest' which I was truly inspired by as I loved the artstyle, the warm vibrant colours they used and the composition as it all played together, bringing out the best from the comic book. All this research gave me a better understanding when it came to analysing artists work as I was able to see smaller details in their work and analyse all the different features they put into their work, conveying how it inspired me and why I like it.
This is why I knew that with all great comic books, they all start of as an idea which develops into a story and it then brought to life through storytelling in a illustrative way (with text). However I needed to look at stories in order to gain a deeper understanding for which is why, continuing on with my secondary research I looked upon the movie called 'The goonies' and the Netflix show ' Stranger Things'. The link between the two was that they were both based in the 80s.In my mind I already thought of setting like story in the 80s for which I'll get into more detail later however for now I focused on the story and the characters in the show. Analysing the characters, i wrote words that linked with their personalities which was easy for me as i have already watched the two shows/movies. I also wrote their plot down to be able to understand it more clearly.
This all led me to start plotting ideas for my own story so I began by writing any ideas that came to my head and also used primary research by asking others for their own ideas for an adventure story. After all this I then picked the ideas I liked and developed them. I research about creating your own stories and came out 'the seven basic plots' which spoke about the meta plot , overcoming the monster , rags of riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy and tragedy. Although this was all useful my main focus was with meta plot, basically the anticipation stage. I knew that if I was to create a comic I wouldn't be able to create the whole story as it takes a lot of time to do so however I knew that if I created one issue, focusing on the beginning of the story and the setup then it would be great. I continued on by choosing my final idea which was about a group of friends who enter a mysterious shop and must deliver back an item to someone before it gets into the wrong hands.
This week of research was very vital as I wanted to get my story plot done with so that I would know what to do when creating the characters for my story.
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To help show further development, I decided to look at character design sheet layouts as it was one of the main priorities with charact...