INITIAL REFINEMENTS
Following on from the work I started to produce in water colour, I have begun refining some of the most successful characters from my initial designs. I have chosen to refine the characters that I think most effectively capture the sporadic and blobby qualities of the sound, and mainly the designs which are most simplistic. I feel these will lend themselves more appropriately to animation and will be effective when animated as there aren't too many components to fight for attention.
An element I identified as needing refinement was the rigidity of the shapes in my characters. The character above had begun with straight legs in the earlier stage of my sketchbook, but I felt that to fully communicate the transience of sound, a more wiggly, free form would be more appropriate. When animating, it could be interesting to explore how the limbs echo sound waves.
I have also been exploring faces and expressions, experimenting with simple marks and lines that take on the basic forms of facial features without creating over characterised expressions that detract from the interest of the irregular body forms. I'm aiming to work away from the human form in the proportion and movement sense, allowing my characters to move and extend in abstract ways. To compliment this I may look to develop my abstract visual clues to communicate facial features, so not to clash with the aesthetic of the main figures.
MODIFICATIONS
I'm finding the use of limited colours really effective against the shape based characters. Using one or two block colours communicates the rather playful tone of voice, whilst complimenting the simplicity of the shapes. Working over the coloured areas with black seems to work well to reveal details and add more visual clues, but I may have to re-think this approach when developing the character for 3D design as it will be difficult to achieve this interplay of media and the line based components will possibly have to be substituted for shapes.
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