I have selected the below character to take forward and develop as the little girl in my illustration. Her form will be further refined, along with the design for her hair style and clothing. I decided to choose this character as i feel she represents the correct age, and has a cute factor that will work well for the illustration.
Not a synopsis in the strictest sense, however its rather necessary for the understanding of the illustration. The idea which drives this project put simply, is the idea that children are scared of the dark, and a further development of the synopsis - is the imagination of children in addition to fear.
In a few articles found on the National Sleep Foundation, and the Baby Centre, an understanding of why such fears are present have begun to develop.
Bedtime fears — of the dark, monsters under the bed, and sleeping alone — are common at this age. These are the years when your child's powers of imagination are exploding, which means that now he can imagine new and scary things to be afraid of. A good portion of his day is spent immersed in fantasy play, in the company of dragons and dinosaurs and bad guys. At bedtime it can be hard for him to shut off his imagination and go to sleep. Even familiar things that have never been scary before, like his darkened bedroom, suddenly seem frightening against the backdrop of what he's been conjuring up all day. And since your child is still learning to distinguish fantasy from reality, the possibility of an invisible creature under his bed seems quite real to him. (Trisha Thompson)
Nighttime fears and nightmares are extremely common in children, especially during the preschool years, but they can definitely occur in older children and adolescents as well. They are part of normal development, as children’s imaginations develop and children begin to understand that there are things that exist that can hurt them. There are times that fears and nightmares are the result of a frightening experience, from being scared by a large dog to being in a car accident to watching the news, but other times they seem to come out of the blue. Family conflict and parental anxiety can also play a role. Anything that makes a child more emotionally aroused is going to make his fears worse and make him feel more anxious. Children also typically have different fears at different developmental stages. Young children are often afraid of monsters and other imaginary creatures, whereas older children are more likely to fear being hurt by more realistic dangers, such as burglars or a natural disaster. (Jodi Mindell)
Children are scared of the dark around the pre-school age as there awareness of the world begins to develop , whilst the ability to determine what is reality and fantasy remains non-existent. This is an interesting idea to develop on, as a child's imagination is endless - allowing for a fantasy concept to take place. The addition of reality adds to the appeal of the concept as it relates to a very real problem facing many children in the modern world
As a child's mind develops, their ability to relate to the world does as well. Which in turn develops their understanding of various different situations that may occur to them. As the character of the little girl in my project is in a situation that would be deemed unbelievable and unrealistic in real life. The idea must therefore be seen through the eyes of a child around the pre-school age - allowing for some sense to come out of a rather wacky concept.
So in a nut shell, the idea for this project is based on that of a pre-school child's worst imagination of what may occur to them whilst daring to go the the toilet at night. A further post will display the link between the chosen environment, the character, the idea, and its minor horror implications.
Here are the initial sketch's for the little girl character of the project. I have attempted to keep the sketch's very loose and all based around the same design. The main purpose of these sketch's was to figure out the proportions of the character, and an artistic style to follow. The character needs to appeal cute and innocent to capture the emotion of the illustration, which will also aid in the synopsis of the piece - the idea that children are scared of the dark. The age of the little girl is also a factor to consider in the design, as it will need to relate to the general age in which the fear of the dark, and sleeping alone begins in a childs life.
The age of the little girl is about 3-4 years old, this enables for a believable role in terms of the synopsis, and is a good age for applying the cute factor. To create the character i have been following the guidelines that the characters body is twice the size of the head, with in some cases half a size more, and the head is generally oversized slightly. The facial features of the character are exagerated, and the face of the character sits quite low on the head.
These sketch's show a range of style, and different types of the same character. I am most pleased with the third set of drawings as they are the more resolved set, but in particular i am pleased with the middle character. After this sketch i then moved on to produce two more, which would focus on raising the age of the character by a year or so - which appeared not to work. Now the basic character sketch is in place i can further resolve the design up on answering the previous environment and setting questions posted below.
The purpose of this tutorial was to further develop and refine my idea proposed in tutorial #01. The main subjects discussed included the setting, aesthetic of the illustration, and some early character sketches were proposed.
From the influence maps posted in a previous post, its clear that there are various different directions in which i can take the project, with the most tasking decision being the overall setting for the illustration. I know that i want to set the illustration in the 50's, which i saw as a rather important piece of information, as this meant that i now had an overall aesthetic and time period to work to.
This therefore answered my question about whether the illustraton is set in the contemporary modern day, or whether it was set 60 years ago. However an interesting point was raised; the illustration can be set in the modern day but still have an overall 50's aesthetic, a good example being Pixar's Monsters Inc. The design aesthetic for Monsters Inc is very 50's inspired, however it is set entirely in the modern day. This can be seen in the introduction for the film which which reflects the concept art and aesthetic of the film, and displays an influence the work produced by Saul Bass.
Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was a graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of film postersand motion picture title sequences.During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder,Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.
The setting for the environment affects certain design elements of the character, i.e the little girls hair style, her clothing, and accessories. Therefore i knew that i needed to figure out the design of the environment before i could work on these areas of her design. However the design of her body and face would remain the same either way, so i was able to work on this without a decision. Some initial character sketches will be posted in a later post soon to come. The next stage of the project will be to make the neccassary design decisions enabling me to move forward with the project and undergo some further research in the basis of the illustration.
A few high res still images from the minor project, as you can see the night time shots have the potential to be something very special - a project definitly worth going back to.
For my first tutorial of the project i approached it with a straight sense of direction, and a clear but concise proposal which can be seen in the post below. As i have approached the project with a previous concept, the basic idea is already in place, however some work around the idea of the piece, and some further development has been needed. To aid in the visual understanding of my project i have produced some influence maps which show a direction for the idea, the character, and the environment. Some interesting points on the project premise and some further ideas were raised, all of which will be taken into account ready for the next tutorial. This first tutorial has been of great value to the project as it has enabled me to further ground my idea, and allow me to move onto the concept stage.
As you can see the influence maps show a rather mixed message in terms of visual direction. There is still a ton of decisions to work out, such as the overall art direction, and the time period of the environment and character - all of which will be developed up on and figured out within the next few posts. On a side note, a similar concept to my idea can be seen below, a set of illustrations which display the world through a child's perspective. They all share a sense of naivety and creativity which i hope to create in my illustration.
Since the briefing I'm not entirely sure which direction i should take this project. After the briefing and some discussions, its clear that a good style and quirky idea is the way forward, however i still find that an interior environment still is something I'm quite interested in producing. Whatever idea i decide to take forward for this project, either way i will be creating an interior environment. Ive been gathering some reference material for style and art direction. The sense of realism i would like to create lies some where between Pixar's Ratatouille, the recent CGI remake of Tintin, and the image below created by Juan Siquier.
Some other visual reference includes the Defective Detective, and The Lady and the Reaper animations. Both of which have had there fair share of influence on this course so far.
I also like the colour palette and low lighting in the 3D illustration by Michal Kwolek, and Carl Fredrikson's house in Pixar's Up.
Another idea for the project, inspired by the following image Barbershop Bear, by Miguel Alba Gutierrez, is to create a still image of a classic tattoo parlour. My only reservations with this idea is that, other than the composition of the image and the set design, there is not much creative design work as it will rely heavily on real life reference, similar to the living room in my transcription project (which i feel was successful). The realism of this piece would be fairly high, so thinking back to the briefing, with the idea that technical capability is taken for granted - this idea has no firm sense of style, as it would be a recreation of a real life scene.
However i do feel there is space for a very nice still image of an interior environment such as this one, as its period set, has a design element to it, and it not your everyday architectural image of interior housing.
This post has narrowed my project down to two very different but main ideas, both of which are the premise for a good project, but now its time to choose one.
Ive re-designed the blog so its up to date with my new branding, im liking how its looking so far, although some changes are needed on the ident so it now matches with the new blog.
Whilst in the progress of refining my idea for the project, i have been working on branding myself as a professional within the CG industry. To begin i started to re-design my logo/blog banner, theres not much variation in the design, but rather the text. Im pretty happy with my existing one so only a simple re-wording was needed. I then took it into After Effects to begin my showreel, so far i have created a simple ident.
