Character facial designs

This week I have been working on facial designs for my pre production project (among other things). I have used an array of different shapes, and styles as Kathy instructed to keep things interesting. As I went through the process I decided to explore the shape of Pie's for a facial shape. This included Round faces, Angular faces (for slices), Mince Pie shapes as well as a combination of all three.

Scanned sketchbook pages:

Some are more successful than others however I have enjoyed the process thoroughly and now know what kind of popular facial styles I will be using for the characters in my show. I have also been working on body types within the same way, (using a shape of a pie) however I will go into body design more this week.

I have also moved on to the era stage of my research. I was contemplating setting my hairdresser in the 50s as I believe that decade fits in with the general feel and mood I had for the show. However as I began to research further into time line and hair styles I found myself being hugely inspired by the "Motown music phenomenon and decided to set my Hairdresser show roughly when that music and style was most popular. This is roughly from 1959-1972. I don't want to have everyone in flairs and 6 foot afro hair cuts, however I feel that this era in time is closest to setting the atmosphere for the show. This is not set in stone however and is subject to change.

For next week if I can I would like to begin transferring some of these character facial designs and incorporating them with a woodcut style.

Pre-Production Update

The research has been an interesting experience so far which has given me the opportunity to dive into an area of art that I haven't experienced before. This week I have been focused on the style of the show. As I mentioned in my previous post I had wanted to set the show in an Afro-Caribbean Hairdresser. I wanted the style which I was given (woodcut) to be influenced by African art and was blessed when I found a book in the Library called "The African Dream" by the artist John Muafangejo. I was imidediatly captivated by his beautiful yet simplistic black and white woodcuts.

Examples of his work:

I have also gathered a huge number of reference images, which explore African paintings that I had been looking into for the bright and beautiful expressive colours and how they were incorporated in the works.

Here are a few of examples:

I had also been working on the character designs of Pie and exploring other character ideas within the show in my sketchbook and when I went into my lecture and showed my tutor I was told to dive into the character design aspect further. I was encouraged to inspect the shape of pie's (as the character personifies elements of a pie) and come up with some designs from them, which is the stage that I am currently working on now.

Here some of the initial sketch designs from before and after the lecture:

The image above was drawn before the lecture. During the lecture I was told it was best to work on the head first which is why most of the images (below) are concentrating on the face.

The class was given an exercise on creating different types of characters through head shapes and face features.

Here are a few character designs for the show while keeping the exercise given to me in mind.

I would like to start on my mood board this week (while working on the character designs from Pie's as reference) as I feel like I have gathered more than enough images and ideas and would like to move onto the development side of the project and continue to research what interests me as I move forward.

Research Week 1: The birth of an Idea

Over the past couple of days I have been in and out of various topics of research for my Pre-Production project. Although I had tried to stick to some sort of organised schedule of which topic to research into first, unfortunately that's all going out the window now and I am working on as much of the different avenues as I possibly can. So in light of this, I apologise if it all seems a little all over the place, but I thought it would be better to post something in this way rather than worry about organising it and never getting round to actually post (which is what I usually do).

Character Research Pie:

This has been one of the areas of research I have found rather difficult, as what I seem to be researching here is the traits and style of the character which are almost intangible at first look. All or most of these traits are similar to that of a baked Pie (as that's the card I received). Warm, Round, Tasty ect. As I personify these traits I feel myself being thrown into an oblivion of ideas. To me at this point the character could be anything. However I have tried my best to narrow the character creational journey down to a few guide lines which are as follows:

Afro-Caribbean Hairdresser
Sisters
Voluptuous/Round
Warm Personality
Mother/Gran
Protector
Loveable
Diva


I have began researching into these characteristics for my mood board here are just a few images that give you an idea of what I am looking for.

Here is one of Peter Paul Rubens paintings which give an idea of the kind of rounded figure style I am researching into for this character.

Here is an image from the movie Belleville Rendezvous. Here I'm focusing on the "Sister" like bond between the characters which I would like to incorporate into the atmosphere of the Salon that Pie will be working at.

Here is an image of the actress Monique who is an example of a muse for the character Pie, both in personality and in visual style.

Last but no least is an image drawn by the famous animator Joanna Quinn who has designed characters that I feel share a similar personality.

As I mentioned above I am working on many parts of the pre-production simultaneously this includes very quick sketches of characters both in my sketchbook and digitally on Photoshop. These are really just ideas, of how the characters and their design could progress.

Here is what I have been working on this week:

Here are just a few initial ideas about the character.

Here I am thinking about the many different types of "eye" styles I could incorporate into the character.

Again taking a brake from research I went back to some ideas for characters and their style. Just focusing on the face I wanted design characters that would be skinny as well so that I explore the character from a different angle.

Setting Hairdresser:

I have been doing research into various different Salon interiors (but I am not going to post the images as it would be abit dull). I have done a few sketches of what one would find in an every day Salon. My next phase into the research of the setting is to do research into different types of hair styles that would be styled and cut at the Salon and hopefully document what I find through sketches.

Here are afew quick sketches looking at Salons from my sketchbook:

Here I am looking at a design for a modern hairdresser seat and sink.

Another seat and although it has a different style the main components remain the same.

This is a quick sketch of a Salon interior.

Style Wood cut

I have done a huge amount of research into the style I have been given for my animation which is Woodcut. I have rented a book from the library that concentrates on African woodcuts created by the artist John Muafangejo and have gathered loads of images found from various artist's websites around the internet.

Here are a few of the images I have been looking at in regards to woodcut. As you can see the type of woodcut focuses less on detail and more on style or colour.

These two images are courtesy of JUstSeeds.org who have a collaboration of amazing modern artists from around the world.

I'm afraid I do not know who this artist is but I saw it on the internet and thought it was beautiful. The use of bright colours is something I wish to incorporate in my designs.

I tried imitating the style of a woodcut using photoshop. The main focus here was just having fun trying different strokes and having a play to see how things will turn out.

This is a character I sketched using the technique I learned playing in Photoshop. I am currently exploring how to create colour woodcut.

I am also researching into African painting with my main focus on identifying the common use of colours implemented in their work. However I will explore the research found there in detail in my next post.