Dichotomous Character Project: Part 1

Our project for the last 3 and half weeks has been the dichotomous character project which required us to design and create our own pair of characters which are opposites in many way but belong to the same world and work together as a pair. Some good examples of dichotomous characters are famous pairs like Mike and Sully from monsters inc, Wall-E and Eva from Wall-E and also live action characters like Laurel and Hardy.

Dichotomous characters need to be obviously different while belonging together. The design differences can rely on a number of things like, shapes (what character type is given by the basic shapes), sizes (big vs small) and the readability/ complexity of the details to name a few.

The project brief laid down the targets to design the pair so they worked well and then model and texture at least one character with stretch goals to create the other character, rig both and do an idle animation. There was no tri budget and loads of freedom to follow any chosen style, tri and texture budget. This made this project that was wide open with many different directions to take where you could easily get stuck deciding what to do. I knew from the Turret project that making the appropriate decisions quickly before you fall behind was crucial, also concepting must be finished before modelling and texturing so you know what you are doing.

I decided to start by looking around for styles for the project as well as mind mapping possible ideas for which direction to go for. I didn't know what style I wanted but through my research into character design and dichotomous pairs in particular they were often more cartoonish and stylized to push the differences further apart . Looking I made multiple mood boards expanding and exploring different styles but narrowing down more at the same time as my mind maps were approaching the final themes.

I wasn't sure what kind of character I wanted to make originally but I knew I wanted something simple that people would recognize and be able to relate to in some way. Originally I was thinking of a man or boy and a dog after seeing an interesting man and his dog running along the river bank nearby but as I moved along I eventually decided I wanted two human characters.

Through my mind maps I did look at other ideas and liked the ideas of friendship and particularly family interactions where people can be very opposite in ways but still work together. I looked towards possible pairs in families and felt like there were lots of combinations in personalities, ages, sizes and shapes with siblings where brothers and sisters can act in many different ways. I myself have two sisters, one older and the other younger and have seen them act in many different ways with their interactions towards each other and with me. I liked the idea of an teenager with angst who is a bit rough around the edges and a cute little girl who really likes and idolizes the older sister.

When I was finalizing the main theme of an older and younger sister I was also getting closer to my chosen styles. I looked at the artwork of Jamie Hewlett the artist who made the artwork for Gorrilaz and Tank Girl. He has a punk vibe to all his work with very angular lines making up the long thin characters. I felt this angular nature to his work would help enhance the idea of an angrier older sister and lead to my decision to make the older sister a bit of a punk while the little sister would be a girly girl and wants to be friends with everyone especially her sister. I wanted to have the sister perceived as lighter character so I made sure the lines were curvier and followed an art style more akin to Victoria Ying's artwork and other artists who have worked on Pixar films.

During the style finding process I knew I had to figure out how to draw in the style as I have never drawn in the style before, and so I did some drawing of pictures from my mood board just so I could understand the style more.

I also made a mood board of pictures of siblings together with many family photos there. This helped my understand proportions of younger children and also I could practice turning the pictures into stylized drawings using which was the next stage in developing my understanding of the style in a practical sense.

During my mood board stage I also did research into the potential 3D parameters I might follow. I decided that I wanted a lower poly model in between the 2000 or 6000 tri mark which would be decided as I got closer to the deadline.

The next step for the project would be the actual designing of the character now that I understood my projects general direction and what style I would be going for.