Studio Brief 1 - I See Faces INITIAL CHARACTER DESIGNS

 

DRAWING WORKSHOP

The drawing workshop with Dominic Kesterton helped me to understand some basic approaches to idea generation that I could apply to my character design. Thinking about alterations to line, shape, exaggeration of scale and inversions, we quickly made a wealth of variations from one starting point. I think these are values that I could take forward in response to the music I have been allocated, perhaps considering how specific sounds might transform as shapes. I have started to consider this through sound mapping.

SOUND MAPPING

Responding to my chosen song, Inspector Norse, I've commenced the design process with a sound map, recording shapes and marks inspired by the sounds and sporadic nature of the piece. Some take on more textural roles, whilst other could be developed to take on abstract body forms. I found this exercise really useful as a starting point as I just through myself into the song and let my pencil start to form the basis for my characters.

MANIPULATING MARKS AND SHAPES

Taking elements recorded in my initial sound map, I started to work into marks and shapes with a heavy black pencil with which I added faces and limbs. Not too detailed but just enough to work as a clue that these shapes were characters. While these worked well to document the audio qualities of the song, I feel that the more mark orientated characters would be difficult to develop and manipulate for a gif as they don't have a strong sense of form. This could make registration difficult and movements would need to be quite gestural to contrast against the busy textures.

Further initial ideas are taking the form of water colour drawings. This media has worked really well in enabling me to explore the fluidity and transience of the song, particularly the more immediate and 'blobby' qualities in the sound. Working with more blocky shapes, I've found it easier to characterise these and manipulate them into abstract body forms. I think these could work really well in the gif context as the irregular shapes could be quite easily manipulated across media and they seem to effectively capture the characteristics and qualities of the piece. 

INTENTIONS

I will continue working on these more shape-based responses to the song and start to consider faces and movement in order to fully communicate the character and narrative of the piece. I think it will be interesting to see how my characters tell a story as there are no lyrics to the piece so this will be a purely incidental outcome, yet the tone of voice of my work will no doubt incur a sense of playfulness.