Character Design Sheets/ working on final pieces

CHARACTER DESIGN SHEETS

As i had done all my experimentation by now, I decided to start working on my character design sheets. The character design sheets are based on real people who filled out a questionnaire i created. My participants had to describe their personality and describe how they would be if a villain or a hero..

 from that i created a design sheet of the characters which was to act as a visual aid for getting a summary of what the characters personality is like - relating to my pathway work of looking at alter ego's and partially to my fine art work during the exploratory stage which looked at the unconscious and the conscious..looking at dreams.

Processes of creating final pieces.

When it came to starting to create final pieces I decided to use a mixture of the techniques I looked at during my experimental stage during the FMP. I was going to use the block type look that noir comics have a swell as the rough strokes i started making with fine liner but doing that digitally instead. For most of the poster designs i used rough drawings i had done on character design sheets which in this case I took pictures of as I did not have a scanner at home but that did not really matter i just needed some outline to start to work with digitally.

I decided to give the three categories of characters different colours so that they have a definition of their own, purple for the ordinary human, blue for the superheroes and red for the villains, I decided to not give the characters faces because it added a noir style and feel of mysteriousness. Also the poster looked much more cleaner, slicker without a face.....plus they don't have faces because they are all based on real people ordinary people who would not be famously known...superheroes and villains in comics are famous...but the person behind the mask is often unknown.

1. Laura  - The Ordinary Human

 I took a photograph of this quick sketch then i placed it onto photo-shop, where i painted around the outlines in white, then painted on the hair in different shades, using the smudge tool to create layered effects, i then painted around the border of the image and also used the smudge tool to create a more electric background with motion...i used the burn tool to crate shadow in the background and the dodge tool to  add a fluorescent highlight... I did the same for the other posters.

In some cases it helped that the rough sketch I done was lightly painted before in water colour..this reacted really well with the smudge tool...therefore creating much more vivid and textured work... This piece is my favorite out of the 6 portraits.

I really liked the way the smudge tool gave me much more control that a fine liner would, plus i could always press undo if i did not like something.... I was not particularly enthusiastic about the design sheets i made for the above character but what i turned it into below is pretty coooool...I am liking the outcomes.

With this piece it looked ok with a face but then i thought the pieces would not link if some had faces and others didn't.... so all of them have no faces.

I really like how this piece has a feel of movement flowing colour and soft fluffy hair...i can see texture.

Here i was more experimental with the way i did the background which look like grape vines...sort of... I think its good that the backgrounds have their own type of designs slight differences which reflect the different personalities the characters have.

RED = EVIL

BLUE = GOOD

PURPLE = NEUTRAL.....blue and red makes purple

Moving onto full body posters

I wanted to have a go at crating full body posters... i had though about having the portraits and full body posters....but i think this might be too much to put in the exhibition.. I may just use the portraits for the exhibition and use the full body pieces as part of my comic book.

I used the same techniques as i used for the portraits ...except I was going for a less abstract look... the poster did not turn out exactly as i wanted it to...

I asked some peer to look at my work and they gave me advice that the full body poster did not have the same sleek/professional look as the portraits and this was because I made the back ground different from the portraits.