Character Design @Chelsea CTE Week 11 - Character/Model Sheets

 

Character/Model Sheet Reference:

Requirements for your character sheet:

1 @ Fully rendered character - full body

3 @ Different poses/angles of your character

3@ Different (up close) facial expressions

My working example (will be updated):

In this image I am showing 2 different versions/takes on how to approach using a computer program to add depth and focus to your character's persona. The left image is a cleaned up version of my original drawing - Middle is just transparent colors dropped on top of my drawing (I do like to add dimensions with gradients, it feels like more is happening with less) - and the right one is mostly just layers of texture (some transparent, some not) collaged together to also add a sense of history and depth quickly.

The vibe each version gives off is quite different - I think of the middle one as being very New York style: polished with clean colors, no wrinkles and fresh kicks. The right one feels very much like the hippy town I grew up in, surrounded by swampland, wrinkly and rugged like she might be at home talking to alligators as much as other human beings. The other choices I am making in my story should help focus how I end up representing this character - she needs to look like she lives in the story and environment I have created.

How do you feel about the choices I've made in color and texture - knowing what her dreams look like from my previous environment study?

Finished Model Sheet:

Character Design @Chelsea CTE Week 10: Environment Design

Process for Environment:

My storyboard sequence that I will be basing my character design materials off of. The main character will be the girl who is dreaming - her name Cassandra refers to a character in Greco-Roman mythology who was cursed with the ability to see the future, but that no one would believe her. Her dream references the kind of nuclear fallout that Godzilla and the Jellyfish Babies of Bikini Atoll speak to. So I technically have 2 environments, the dream state and the real world. For this program I chose to focus on the Dream State, because it bears the most importance on communicating the horror of our potential future climate reality.

 

Frame I chose to focus on, to flesh out the quality I want this environment to have:

Once I had a clearer sense of my direction, I created a mood board that helps focus my attention on the most important aspects of communicating the vibe of my story:

1. Textures and Colors - I want this to feel landed in real world enough that we believe the strangeness of scale and colors, so I looked to really organic and recognizable textures to overlay, adding a depth and variety to the environment quickly, without me having to stress over rendering each aspect freehand

2. Flora and Fauna - what kinds of creatures and plant life do I want to populate this environment, to make it feel like it belongs to them - I also really wanted the feel/evidence of human existence to be clearly represented, but with the kind of impersonal incorporation that I associate with natural disasters: Nature doesn't care who or what is in its path, but consumes everything. This was also a place to play with an x-ray quality, since x-rays involve radioactive particles, and gives another hint/layer to the nuclear fall out suggested. I'm looking for ways to reinforce my narrative.

3. An example of how I want the character to be rendered - here I am working with a kind of ghostly quality that lives at the edge of scary and beautiful, but also reinforces the Dream State, or like she is a visitor from another world. I want her and the fish to mirror each other, and they will share characteristics to also help us understand there is a connection - I will dig more into that part of the concept when we look at character sheets

4. Transitioning Between Worlds - the movement between the worlds is the place where the ideas really land, where we are forced to reckon with what could be vs what is - so while I have not chosen to create an environment to bridge that gap, I did feel it was important to have a nod to that aspect of the story, because it informs all of my decisions about characters, elements that cross between etc

Environment Study:

I layered colors and textures on top of my drawing - sometimes I do more of a full on collage style, sometimes I focus more on accentuating my rendering and line quality, but in this one, I was really thinking about the kind of mood I wanted this world to have. I have leaned into poisonous/acidic colors, made the water murky, and vaguely reminiscent of an oil spill - things are flowy and organic, but with sharp edges, and even the afternoon light penetrating the water is a sickly green, revealing massive, dangerous creatures that we as the viewer know the individuals in the tiny boat are probably not aware of - a kind of knowing that gives a sense of foreboding.

Mood Boards I've made for professional projects in Theatre, Film, Music Videos:

An important piece as the Production Designer is making sure my vision aligns with everyone else's on the team - from the Director to the Costume Designer - and even for my Graphic Design clients, I send them a round up of images to get a clearer sense of their personal aesthetic, to make things that genuinely speak to them and the quality they want to convey. Sourcing images to support you as you develop a larger vision is a really important part of being able to see your narrative structures more clearly.

 

Environment Studies from Professional Concept Artists:

Tonight's Guest Artist: Fio Fuentes

Zoom Link: Click Here!

Interactions - Exploring Communication in Relationship @APR

What kinds of things can we use to express the way we communicate with each other? Protest art is often a way of capturing strong emotions with word and image to appeal to our audience. What other ways do we have to tell others what we are feeling? What kinds of symbols and images can help us visualize the impact of our words on the world?

Example: Fire can be used to show...

- Anger

- Feeling consumed

- Passion

- Spicy Food

- Spicy Language 

Words can wake us up, shake us, allow us to release, to express, to vent, to voice or give voice to what is happening inside of us or between ourselves and others. Words can be sharp, stinging, sad, silly - we can use them to sing a song, cry for help, tell a joke. We can use a megaphone, a microphone, a cell phone - to breath fire or spit bars, sound comes out of us in the form of a story. Maybe - if we are lucky - there are people in our lives that can help us organize the tangled threads and crochet it all into a story quilt, so we can see ourselves and our lives more clearly - like a friend, a parent, a therapist, a stranger on the bus.

Ways we engage with each other: 

- Comforting

- Laughing

- Wishing

- Vomiting

- Screaming

- Singing

- Preaching

- Performing

Day 1: The Brainstorm

Pair up (or be prepared to show an exchange between 2 individuals) and begin to explore what kind of interaction each pair wants to illustrate. Today is just about focusing on how to show the nature of the exchange without words - what does it feel, taste, look like to witness or be inside of this conversation? Is it a conflict, a memory, a wish for the kind of exchange that is not available right now? Is it familiar, an exploration of how you feel most seen or heard? How do we translate that into something tangible, metaphorical?

Create 4 sketches - to choose 1 for us to jump into media with during the next session - go wide and try out a bunch of different things before settling on the right one for you and your partner.

Initial Brainstorm

My work-in-progress/sketch

Day 2: Making the Piece

Utilizing the materials we have been exploring and maybe some of the techniques that we have practiced together, each pair will figure out what vantage point and materials most fit the quality of their individual communication styles - each person is responsible for their part of the conversation/piece, but the 2 should fit together to tell us a story about the relationship between the 2 parts.

Previous student work:

Interactions Project @Hudson

The idea:

You are creating a piece of art that explores an interaction/conversation between 2 people – but not with words. Your job is to explore how to communicate the feeling of the words coming out of each person, and the way it lands on the other using colors and shapes that represent the exchange taking place.

 

Example:

Anger can feel hot and out of control like fire, it can feel cold and vicious like a million teeth – we might all understand our anger differently. If someone comes to you with angry words that are like fire, how do you respond? Do you bring fire back? Do you put it out with a wave of cool water? Do you create an impossible to penetrate stone wall, keeping yourself and your feelings contained and protected?

If you are showing a warm and loving conversation, or two people who are talking that really see or get each other – how can you show that warmth coming out of one person and touching the other? Is the conversation like a fire that warms both people? Is one person’s words like sunshine on the face of the other person? Is the warmth or light calming or disappearing the storm inside of the other person? Is one person seeing the starlight contained in the other person?

 

I want to feel this art piece from across the room, not read it. I want the colors and shapes to tell a story with things that we can FEEL. You decide what kind of conversation you want to show – maybe it is a conversation you are still thinking about, or one you wish you could have – that is up to you. Everyone needs to use a minimum of 3 types of art materials on their piece.

 

Day 1: Sketch your idea onto the nice paper

Day 2: Everyone is going to do a watercolor wash over the whole piece – using a color on each part of the conversation that informs the feeling (I will show you what I mean)

Day 3: Adding layers of other media on top, however you want to render your piece – Oil pastel, Chalk pastel, Acrylic paint, Markers, Colored pencils, Pens, Printmaking stuff, Watercolor

Day 4: I will not be here, there will be another teaching artist in my place – all those materials will be out, it will be a work day

Day 5: Finishing your piece completely. Last day to work on it.