Dichotomous Character Project: Part 2

Once the basic research had been done and I had a firm base for the project and once I had that base I could move on towards designing the character.

I decided to start with designing the heads because I already had a fairly good idea of how I would make their body differ and I wanted to focus on the head because It is an important part of how we read emotions and what a character be like ( not to say the rest isn't just as important). I started with general heads from either one before focusing on each of them individually and eventually decided.

Once I had the heads I moved on the the bodies and looked at having opposing shapes into the bodies with an inverted triangle for the tall stretched out sister and a squat triangle for the little sister that would be more rounded. I also made a mood board around this time comparing punks to little girls to look at clothes styles. Even with the mood board I had a hard time deciding what the little sister should wear and eventually looked towards my own sisters interactions and remembered that when my older sister left home my little sister would often make raids into the former's room and "borrow" the clothes left behind. This gave me the idea that the little sister would actually aspire to be a punk like the older sister but fail because of her naivete by wearing wellies instead of boots, having the clothes not torn up and badges of happy things that she liked rather then that other things the sister wore.

Once I had decided pretty much what they would look like I developed some sketches of them in a pose that helps to illustrate the ways in which they are different. As well a physical attributes I know from my background in drama that the main parts that make characters interesting a different are attributes like the gait (walk) of a character. The inclination of the head and body tension all of which should also be considered when designing a character just as much as when acting or animating. I had to think about the characters personalities which is something I always thought about throughout the project and what kind of person they would be like. In this pose you can see the laid back nature of the older sister coming through in the non-nonchalant walk as the energetic enthusiastic little sister strides with purpose in front with arms out high with small tight fists.

After I had a pose I knew I still had to further develop the concept so I could model it. I wanted to make orthographic but my first attempt was pretty weak so I set about drawing the character from multiple viewpoints to build up how they work. I also experimented with some other ways of posing the characters so I could explore them in more depth.

I then made some quick pose of them interacting which would be the basis of the idle animation I would make as a stretch goal. I also remade my orthographic images because they were still filled with lots of errors that would make it impossible to model from them. I also made some adjustments to the head front view to make it more interesting.

During and after this development process on paper I was also looking at values and colour in the digital format deciding to go straight into so more polished pieces to see what I would get before going into thumbs. I made a colour reference board from pictures in my mood boards and then took swatches for potential colours to use. I have struggled with digital work for a while and still don't quite have the hang off it.  knew after this that I still had alot of development of values before colour could be tried out.

I developed the values first before moving on to choosing the colours. I wanted the little sister to have lighter values and the older sister to have darker values to contrast between their personalities and styles while still having a gradient running throughout them that brought your eyes up to their head (following the dota 2 art guide). Character contrast was also experimented with in the colours as well with the elder sister having more desatutrated colours and the younger sister having increased saturation. I still wanted them to meet together somehow so I decided rather then colouring the little sisters jacket differently it would be the same color just at a lighter value.

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.

Trip to Warwick Castle... plus some life drawing

To follow up on my last blog post which was more of a catch up of my personal stuff I thought I would tell you right away whats been going down in that department this week and also to talk about how the problem of unfinished finals (ie car) will be solved in the upcoming weeks.

This Saturday my good friend Denzil Forde and I went to the nearby Warwick castle to gather some reference material for his character project and do some drawing. After some panicking and train stations and many minutes of running we finally got to the Warwick station and walked through the town to the castle. Even though I live in a small village in Worcestershire my family comes from Warwickshire (mainly Kenilworth) and I have been to all the spots many times. Almost weekly visits to Stratford-on-Avon in the summer. I've visited Kenilworth Castle, Warwick castle Kenilworth Common and many other  places time and time again but not much since I started the course a year ago and see the place in a new way. We visited the amazing collegiate church in Warwick with its magnificent vertical stonework from its Perpendicular Gothic style which took the eye upwards and toward the stain-glassed windows.

We also spent some time in the crypts which have some awesome dark Norman Gothic arches and could really work well as a game environment.

After the church it was a short walk to the castle which was very much how I remember it (apart from increased ticket prices) walking around the grounds and along the ramparts was fun and there were lots of chances to gather plenty of texture references and character reference photos both from the costumes and creepy mannequins they had there but also from some epic poses.

When it came to drawing we didn't have much time and because of rain we couldn't get drawing outside the castle for long so most of my thumbs were of the great hall were the crackling fire warmed up and cast some lovely lighting conditions on the room with all the intricate ornaments lit up.

I didn't get time to do a final and this brings me on to my plan to not do this personal project blog post next weekend and possibly the weekend after that. We have started our new project which is to make two dichotomous characters which work together as a pair. for a 3 week time frame this is a big project and because of its nature I really want to hit all the stretch goals so I wont be developing finals for two or three weeks for my personal work and plan to bash them out over the last week of term/Christmas. I also did this post now so when I do the blog posts for the character project they all sit together and tell one cohesive story for the project.

To finish up here are my latest life drawings. Enjoy.

Catch Up Time: Life drawing and personal project

Now that the sentry turret project is finally over I have the chance to update you on how I've been getting on with my personal projects of the year 1 redo and how my life drawing is getting on.

We will start with the weekly personal Sunday drawing session. I missed out on updating you last week because I was too busy learning how to bake normal maps and ambient occlusion maps and I didn't show you what the subject was. Last week I went out to repeat the Car project from last year which is just a use of boxing and perspective to generate cars that sit well. I never finished the final to this project because the car drove off early on leaving me freezing and annoyed. I will do a full final this week if I get time (which I think I will).

The project this Sunday was the space center project which involves going to the national space center in the outskirts of Leicester. I walked and did some thumbs of the outside before moving in to do some sketches of the items in the lobby and a final of the Soyuz space capsule on display their. Its amazing that they still use these machines that were designed decades ago. It also fits the space theme recently with the Philae lander touching down on comet 67P after leaving the Rosetta probe.

First launched in 1967 the Soyuz capsule is the most widely used and safest space craft and is still used today for ISS missions.

This now brings me onto the next topic of this post which is Life Drawing. Last month I said that I would compare my life drawing progress every month and now is that time. Over the month I continued to do life drawing often always at least three times a week and during the first weeks I did it every day. However as the projects have heated up I must say I have been slowing down and the last 2 weeks I didn't really get enough time. I did however get selected to life draw during the Leicester Media schools opening which was an interesting experince as I got to draw a model wearing some costumes which really made me feel like I might be drawing a game character.

I really like this pose and costume it had an air of authority.

So after looking at these most recent drawing I would say that I am improving. My knowledge of how to plan hands and feet has definitely improved due to life drawing on thursdays with Jeff he has a nice feedback technique where he really analyses your work and taking this on board has allowed me to improve in these areas. I would say that I still really struggle with 30 second and 1 minute poses and I should get out of the habit of drawing a circle for the head because it looks quite silly (besides nobodys head is a perfect circle).

I am improving but slowly. I know that I should increase the amount I do life drawing and keep the routine strong.