Week Fifteen

As the sentry gun project has finally come to a close, we now have a new one - "dichotomous characters", which spans five weeks. Our task is to create two characters who are complete opposites, but the nature of this dynamic can be determined freely by us. Examples would be characteristics such as: hot and cold, smart and dumb, big and small and so on - though these are the obvious go-to choices, and I want to go with something a little more interesting. I eventually settled on "Hardened" and "Sheltered", with hardened being "battle hardened" and sheltered being "led a sheltered life" - but I'll get more into that in the sections below!

Here we can see a few samples of this week's life drawing class on Tuesday. In aid of our character-creating project we focusing on the facial structure over the usual full figure. I imagine this decision was made in order for us to realise the potential of how we can use the faces of our characters to convey their message and personality, which is something I appreciate as I have opted to make mine stylised rather than realistic - far more fun! This plays into my field a little more as I am very much at home using the more cartoony and expressive styles.

Generally speaking I'm pleased with how these drawings turned out - you see as we move from the left to the right of the page the drawings have had more time allocated to them. If I had to be picky I would have to say that the shading (though there's little of it) that I've applied to the final image doesn't really seem to serve a purpose, as it hardly adds any information to the piece. I can't remember specifically, but I may have just added it on a whim after we'd finished sketching. I definitely prefer the situations where I manage to set some time aside for the shading, as most of the time it works greatly to the favour of the piece.

Also on the Tuesday, Mike Kelly provided us with a special template to help develop our characters, known as a "character creation matrix". It has about 50 different fields which all need to be filled with information regarding the character, but it also makes you think about their potential backstory and its context in the game they are designed for, rather than simple traits. If the text isn't too small, you may notice that I've actually written the two characters into each other's stories, giving them a solid reason for their fates to be intertwined - I've done this so that the audience knows where they stand with one another, and it will also help me when I visualise them interacting during the concepting period.

So, here we have 12 prospective hardened brutes and sheltered princesses! When it came to choosing the most appropriate silhouette for the hardened character, I didn't want him to look to gruff and off putting, (such as the bottom-left, the skinhead brandishing a dagger) but rather more complimentary to the little princess, so I eventually went with a design that kept the towering masculinity motif, but left room for a potentially kind heart. As you can probably see, most of the princess designs contain an umbrella, which is a deliberate design choice. Not only is it written into the character creation matrix, but it also acts as a good prop to signify her nobility simply from her silhouette, while also saying "sheltered" in a more literal manner!