Tag: Project

Originally, I thought of my character as only a “messenger” of the Fates. So, my original idea for clothing was to be graceful, long and flowing (See Below).

This didn’t satisfy me, as i thought it was quite dull and basic. Leaving no room to design other pieces of clothing.

Looking back, literature such as The Shield of Heracles (248-57) seems to suggest that the Keres functioned like the Valkyrie of Norse mythology, though more malevolent.

The black Dooms gnashing their white teeth, grim-eyed, fierce, bloody, terrifying fought over the men who were dying for they were all longing to drink dark blood. As soon as they caught a man who had fallen or one newly wounded, one of them clasped her great claws around him and his soul went down to Hades, to chilly Tartarus. And when they had satisfied their hearts with human blood, they would throw that one behind them and rush back again into the battle and the tumult.

Redfield, J. (1994). Nature and culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector. Durham: Duke University Press.

This then gave me the idea to don them in armor, though I wanted to keep the bird/vulture aesthetic.

With further refinement, the inspiration for this design stems traditional knight armor, Game of Thrones and the female warriors of Wakanda. Whilst trying to stay near the “vulture” aesthetic.

The Armor

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The Inspiration

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Overall, I’m happy with the second design I came up with. Though it definitely needs some fine tuning. For example, the detail in the breastplate is not as obvious, and I need to learn how to shade still.

Objective:

Out of the ideas I amassed previously, I have come to the conclusion that the creative project I aim to produce this semester is a Character Design. Character Design simply put is the creation of a new, original character. Typically utilized in comic books, animations and video games (Bancroft, 2016). The end goal of this project is to produce my own original character including back-story and sketches following a similar design path to Tillman (2011).

Part 1: Research & Backstory

• Weeks 3-5

Part 1 is the research stage, there will be no sketching for this portion. This stage exists to help plan my characters theme and archetype. Theme being the overarching traits that define the character, where as archetypes are essentially the mould that allows us to categorize them (Tillman, 2011). Once the research into archetypes and themes has been done It will allow me to create a character sheet outlining their traits and their backstory which will help fine tune the design process.

Part 2: Sketch Brainstorming

• Weeks 6-9

Given the above character sheet and backstory, the goal of this section is to begin digitally sketching possible designs of the characters hairstyle, clothing and weaponry that I can then take and apply to a range of possible character designs as front character views.

Part 3: Designing

• Weeks 10-13

This stretch of the project involves refining the concepts I have constructed in the previous step. I’ll start to construct orthographic projections of these designs. Orthographic drawings are 2D representations of 3D objects, hence they will allow me to represent the object from different angles (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, n.d.). Furthermore, I will then refine the design that stands out to me the most. Once the final design has been polished, the orthographic will be done in full colour as my final creative piece.

Overall, my goal for this project is to re-ignite the passion I had for drawing when I was younger, and also to help me transition from drawing on pen and paper, to the foreign world of drawing on a tablet.

References

Bancroft, T. (2016). What is character design? Retrieved from
https://taughtbyapro.com/news/what-is-character-design/

Orthographic Projection. (n.d). In Webster’s New World College Dictionary.
Retrieved from https://www.yourdictionary.com/orthographic-projection

Tillman, B. (2011). Creative character design. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.