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.

sketchbook research and experiments - reflection

This is the front cover of my sketch book and its a summary of what my theme is ..Heroes Villains and the ordinary... i made this after practising to use a tablet pen on photoshop.
 I used the colours red blue and black because those were the colours which are going to be involved in my comic to turn my characters into superheroes and villains...( the liquid the alien injects into duplicates of people it abducts)...blue for the superhero and red for the villain...the black and white are the colours of the characters costumes...thought u may change the colour for the superheros to be green ( just like the colour)

I scribbled with red, blue and black then placed type on top which i then flattened.... then i used the smudge tool to make it look edgey ... then on the side i was playing around with the smudge tool and decided to try and create a face which kind of worked... i printed off this in A3 then began to draw around the face with fine liner to create a more recognizable face that had more detailed... I wanted it to look like a person fading in the background...PART OF THE ORDINARY...who in my sketchbook will have a chance to be more that the ordinary... I shall turn them into a superhero and a villain... the un-ordinary.

The whole idea behind the comic will be that two characters are abducted by an alien who wants to experiment on the form of humans he duplicates the two characters into two so there are 3 versions of one character...the real character remains an ordinary person and the other two are either injected with blue or red fluid which will turn them into a hero or villain.... and the adventure begins when one of the villain duplicates gets out of control and breaks free.....

After having a look at Marvel comics I found a similarity between what they do and what i want to achieve in terms of focusing on the superhero and villains characterisation in detail... normally the heroes are quite ordinary people with normal lives or in some instances considered the misfits.freaks... unlike other heroes which are successful wealthy, good looking...e.g Iron Man... I want my characters to be normal people who get to live another life...explore their alter ego through my comic.

Next i had a look at Dark Horse Comics but i was mostly drawn to their logo design which is something i had not thought before... i would need to create my own logo for my comic book company... and maybe a logo for  the particular series i am going to make...but mainly focusing on the comic book company logo....

For my logo i wanted it to have a link to my pathway stage of alter egos so i decided to call my comic book company name Alter Ego Comics or A.E Comics... I looked into crest designs because i remembered a particular logo for the comic The Umbrella Academy which i quite liked.... i noticed the crests where quite symbolic in some way and so thought have Alter Ego Comics or A.e Comics at the bottom of a crest would be boring...so looked into how you write Alter Ego in Japanese... just because i like anime and everything Japanese and to me Japanese writing looks quite symbolic.... i made rough drawings of 3 faces  = Sigmund Freuds ID, EGO, SUPER EGO... with he middle face having eyes which said alter ego in Japanese..... I went on to create the logo on the opposite page...

buuuut it turned into a complex illustration rather than the simple bold logo i was looking for ... but i quite like the way the word alter ego was in the eyes because you see someones ego change with your eyes in most cases...e.g lady gaga fashion/hair change.

Next i tried to simplify my idea and did other rough drawings developing the logo to just being an eye with the Japanese translation in the middle of the eye...working on Photoshop to change colour and add font...I thought having just the eye with the Japanese in the middle would still be a good logo but not everyone can read Japanese ...so added comics at the bottom...so its more obvious that the logo is for a comic book company ....I then had a go at having two eyes with "comics" in the middle but felt it was not as strong and as much of a big statement maker as one eye...SOOOO stuck with one eye.

Next in drawing I had a go at doing some etching which i had never done before. This was just part of experimenting seeing how i could change my logo... this was done after creating the big illustration of a complex logo and here i was trying to simplify it and turn it into a print... I found it difficult to scratch onto the metal plate and it was hard to add detail... I only like one of the three faces from my prints... I doubt I'd use this technique as it would take too long to create a comic book this way... i could have created a logo this way how ever i would have to scan in into photo-shop anyway to place it on the front cover of my comic... not a technique i'll be using.

I had a look at Gabriel Ba' because he works fro Dark Horse Comics and generally took interest in his work a year or two ago when reading one of his assigned work.. The Umbrella Academy...the illustrations of characters had a square characteristic to them which i attempted to replicate in my sketchbook.... it sort of worked though i think i will use my own way of drawing in my comic book...much easier and quicker...more original.. i was just trying out his technique because it looked interesting to me.

Here i was still looking at Dark Horse Comics and on their website they had a page where they showed a step by step development of how the paneling in The Umbrella Academy took place. I had not thought of looking at comic book layouts just yet but since it was related and i just came across it it inspired me to have a go at following the same steps in creating a panel for a comic which i was going to make up...

...I followed the same type of layout as above and created a situation where two girls where in some type of desert... One of the characters is trying to convince her sister to return home so that she can help her family in a time of battle( not related to the story line which will be for my final comic...although there will be a desert and some type of sisterhood brotherhood relationship thing...alter egos fighting..)

1. Rough drawing plan of scenario

2. More carefully done illustration done in ink... I went for a Noir style which i had explored in my experiments before...but thought it would be good to see how this would look with some colour, but i wanted to keep it simple and block colours..

3. I decided to use the colours red and black after looking at J.H Williams III Batwoman series which used black and red quite a lot and i found his work quite bold so thought i would do the same in this experiment.... Most people have said it looks like an Emily Strange series... perhaps because of the colours... I filled the page spaces on photo-shop in black then filled the panels in red, keeping objects and characters white so they stood out.... I also smudged the edges so that it looked neat because after filling an image a rough edge with outline appears which does not look very professional... peers liked this piece but said they preferred the above piece with no colour... I might use the technique above and just add hints/splashes of colour...

4. Text added.... i did not know there was a tool on Photo shop to create speech bubbles so this piece has speech bubbles created by painting with white then typing ontop of it then using the history brush after to make the speech bubble more comic like with the little trail which goes near the mouth of the person speaking...although i quite like the cloud like fluffy-ness of the speech bubbles i made my self




5. I placed actual speech bubbles next and i think it looks more professional ...However i had difficulties fitting the words into them ... I had to re size the speech bubble then the type bubble.... it was long and frustrating and it would cover most of the image which was annoying ...I could have made the writing smaller but that would be difficult to read and look horrible.... but anyway this was the final product.... But i am slightly doubtful if i will follow the photo-shop speech bubbles... I most most likely going to follow my paint method.

 Noir Comic Experiments - In more detail

This was my first attempt in creating Noir like comic related pieces...this was a sketched piece and it is related to the story behind what i want to happen in my comic... this is a character which is one of the villains who breaks out of one of the capsules the alien keeps them whilst carrying out experiments and this piece is the moment when the character wakes up and is about to rip off their breathing mask and break through a womb like capsule..... I really like the look as this and its H. Gieger inspired but it is not as block coloured as the noir comic covers i have looked at.... but i thought i would play around with the image as shown on the opposite page where my Drawing teacher suggested i use it as a way of experimenting with layouts. I had different photocopied copies and sizes which i cut up and rearranged to make one piece... this helped me to think of a way of laying out my comic book pages which may be a quicker way of telling a story .. for example in one panel there maybe 5 different illustrated piece but with this technique i could just use one illustration and use it as a summarised illustration...yh

Here I had some leftover white ink from making something else and thought that using one colour would force me to create block coloured work which looked more Noir like... I used the ink to create an outline coloured in i used the colour of the paper as the highlights and added more ink in parts which would be shadows... I am quite pleased with the results... on the opposite page i went super experimental by adding compressed charcoal over the still wet background to make the white figure stand out more... the woman figure looks frumpy but that maybe because i just needed to draw the figure outline first so it would be easier to paint or use a smaller brush.... but the black around the white did create a cool ghostly look buuuut i did not spray the piece with fixative which ended up messing up the other page... my theory was watery page+ compressed charcoal = no need for fixative = long........ If i decided to use this technique for my comic it would involve creating quite large pieces like A4 which i would have to spray with fixative then scan into the computer to make them much smaller and .... its would be long.

The ink pieces were done quite quickly and roughly which i usually have difficulty doing.... but i thought i would use this method when trying out the tablet pen on photoshop. I started off by scribbling as you do when you dont know how to use something ... bu i liked the way my scribbles looked quite 3D... its not as clear on here but this is where i got the idea for making my sketchbook cover ... the one with black/red/blue scribbles and a face..... I then went on with trying to create faces.. i had a printed out image of a face and i was drawing around that with the tablet pen but it wasnt working at all and it looked pretty bad ... so i just went with the scribble an image method... The boy with a heart jumper started as three blobs which i saw as a face so added a mouth then the scribbly hair adding on ears then the collar and jumper... i added the spiky ish heart because the drawing looked a bit plain..... I then went on to create much smaller but quicker drawings of different characters i was randomly coming up with on the spot like Mr Croc... surprisingly they looked aright and would make quite an interesting comic if i followed this method... Its quick, easy and fun.

Following the rough approach i thought i'd go for the black and white look like in the Noir Comics I had been looking at... Here i used fine liners and used the rough approach of creating illustrations... which was very effective... most of my work before this like the logo illustration look like this because i have a tendency of working back and forth on things... its an easier way for me to do work... This is the technique i am most likely to use with my comic and maybe adding hints of colour... and its much easier to do that using the tablet pen...why i don't know ...maybe its because when drawing you are drawing where you're looking but with a tablet pen you are drawing on the tablet but have to look at the screen for what you;re doing... i think that's too much multi-tasking for my brain.

Next i looked at Michael Angelo's work and looked at it in terms of turning it into a negative so that it looks like a Noir Comic then had a go at copying his work and then creating my own pieces on this ghostly look.... Also it was good to look at  his sketches for drawing the body... i tend to focus on faces so this was a good way to make me look at the body rather than the face.

This is my version of Michael Angelo's sketch above..which i am very pleased about because its A2 and i did it in about 10 mins maybe a little more which is a record speed for me... i think its because i did not put much thought through it just went for it and did not try to create a pencil outline first which is where i usually spent most of the time.... using conte forced me to just do whatever happened... I'm sure its not exactly in proportion but i'm happy with it.... less thinking more free doing :)....or should that be less worrying about it not being perfect and relaxing :) which seems to create better work... The only problem with this technique is that i would have to scan every piece to re-size it so it can fit into a comic.. other than that its all good.

Next i decided to use the same technique but to create two characters a girl and a boy.... in my comic there shall be a girl and a boy, this is so that my comic appeals to both genders.... The girl was my first attempt creating a face in this style without looking at something to draw so it was out of my head... it was difficult to designate what was going to be the shadow and highlights because i was drawing with white on black paper... hard because i'm used to draw with black on white... so the girls looks a little odd and little creepy, but the ghostly look is quite interesting... i went on to draw the boy who looks much better ...well less creepy.. i think that's because i was used to creating an illustration that looks like a negative.

This alien character was more of me experimenting with how i wanted my alien to look like.... after my art history seminar most people aid it would be interesting to have an alien which does not necessarily look like an alien but that it would be quite adventurous to get people interested in the comic because having an alien which looks gender-less faceless basically just a blob shape shifting thing might be too alien for people (e.g Revesara) ... I think i like my alien design for Revesara... the aliens with faces ... hmm they are not very unique... i just imagined what they would look like in a movie adaptation they would look like something from doctor who... nothing wrong worth doctor who aliens per say buuuut not what i'm going for... I want a comic thats sleek, modern, ruthless yhh!!... ( Saints Row Advert... with the cat gangster... attitude)... my comic book is not for little children its going to be aimed for 16+ or 18+ depends how thriller it gets... how far the villains go crazy.

As I'm abut to go onto character design and get this show rolling i looked at Harvey Montecillo Tolibao mainly for his character designs as a way to get me started... his art work is good too...but i felt they looked a little plain didnt explain the character and their powers fully so i went on to look at J.H Williams who had much more detailed character design sheets...well Harvey Tolibao probably does have more in depth character design sheets but i couldn't find any...

I was also looking at J.H William III for his panel designs..they are insane!! They are not like conventional square boxes but rather look like an art piece by them self... the illustration becomes a panel in its own right... i shall look more into him when i get to the creating my comic book page stage but for now i focus on getting my characters sorted out.

I have looked at a few personality questionnaires to help me make my create your own comic character questionnaire turn into an alter ego questionnaire sort of.... I didn't want to make my questionnaire long and boring for my participants and tried to make it fun as well as psychological-ish...so the first part of my questionnaire focuses on what powers my participants what to have what they want to wear then the last part is more describe your personality...describe your superheroes personality ...your villains personality.... Some people have commented that i'm making other people do most of the work by letting them create the characters... BUT THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS IS TO CREATE A COMIC BASED ON REAL PEOPLES PERSONALITY/ALTER EGO... so i have to know what they want to wear...this can show someones personality/alter ego... my job is to bring their alter egos to life in a comic book( relating to pathway stage).... also i have saved myself time in collecting questionnaire from random people because i will have to shuffle through loads of questionnaires until i find someones personality who i think is interesting ... random people are most likely not to be as open to me about their personality.... So i chose two of my friends a boy and a girl who i believe have quite distinct personalities who i know will be truthful and trust me in my questionnaire.... i have more reliable research this way ^_^

My Questionnaire and Responses:

The questionnaire I  created ranged from what would your villain wear to how would you describe your personality. I did not want it to be a painfully long questionnaire where i would use my opinion on what i think peoples personality rather just tell me what you think you are and how you would be in evil circumstances or angelic circumstances.... I filtered through the questionnaires trying to create more background information about the characters such as looking into the powers they chose and the names they chose... the meaning behind them.

I then created rough design sheets which were a bit like a mind map of the characters personality.... I had feed back from my visual studies teacher who had a look at them and said i could try and make the characters look more human like add muscle .... for example my male characters in the design sheets look somewhat feminine in terms of their body structure... however i think i want the androgynous look...for now i shall start on creating some final pieces...the posters

So far i plan to make posters and a comic book the animation idea is kind of going in the bin because i will not have enough time to make one..... i did not have a definite plan to create an animation in the beginning it was just another way of showing how i could move my idea forward.

Critique from teachers and peers 29/03/12

The general plan for me is to move onto some final developments during half term.

Details of Discussion:

• The need to finish design sheets ( x6) - I will be having 6 design sheets because i have 2 people who will be turned into a Hero, Villain and their ordinary self making 6 characters therefore needing 6 design sheets.
• Begin Posters - range possible layouts. Explore fonts, Ideas and layout - realistically for me to create good design sheets and posters i will not be doing anything to do with fonts. story boards or layouts over half term..i shall do that when i go back to college
• Storyboard to show what happens in the story - i shall do this after half term

Smart Targets

• Finish off annotation - will be completed over half term
• Finish design sheets (x6) - will be done over half term
• Begin Posters ( x6) - will be done over half term.... Explore fonts/ style/ how will the type appear - will be done after half term
• Try mixed media? colour - done during experiments and following noir style preferred by most peers with hints of colour.

Current attendance : 78% - this is due to me being a little late in the mornings, but i feel i use my time in college well and i plan to be on time next term... i need to organise myself more

Learner on target : Yes - yayy :)

Actions : Keep up to date with journal... i think i am, i do not always put my reflection on my blog everyday but i note down what i wanted to put on a particular day...which is why there maybe big gaps between posts and other posts which appear very large in quantity....because its different days in one post but i post things which are linked together sometimes instead of just following a date by date post.

Self- reflection of Fmp so far/ Class Crituque

20/03/12
Seminar Given to Art History Class Feedback:
Egija:

• Nice drawings
• Like that you been looking into different techniques of work
• Your work with ps is interesting (ps = pshotoshop?)
• Showing 3 faces but in reflection more 
• Comic book
• Consider looking back like some demons etc (history)  - in the past people thought shape shifters (related to my changing alien) were as real as anything e.g witch craft..and in art history we looked at a painting with a woman laying on a bed with a gargoyle looking fury monster thing sitting by her...although my alien is not really going to be much of a scare thing

Emma:

• Comic - focus on split personality of alter ego ( continuing to psychologically analyse while surveying alter egos( superheros)
• Looking at more conventional + unique characters that may not sure 'real' human form - deviates - from typical stereotypes  - ( my revesara alien)

Experiments Done:

22/03/12
Im my Fmp time scale so far i had planned to do some research which included looking at Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, gABRIEL bA',  and j.H Williams....However i have done all of my research for up until week 3 but i am a little behind with annotation which i plan to catch up with by next week. Also i haven ended up doing other things which i had not planned or thought about doing before such as creating a logo design for my Comic book company and doing experiments based on some Noir comic covers i looked at. I am pleased that i have started with experiments as i have a habit of making every one of my experiments into a final piece but now i have learned to just leave things which may not be completely relevant to my brief.

I just need to be more focused in order to be up to date with annotations, i am up to date with my journal which i'm happy about.

I have decided that i will be having 3 characters which will turn into six...the heroes and the villains...really there are 9 since my theme is Heroes (the good) Villains (evil twin) and the Ordinary ( the heroes and villains in their ordinary state.... but i will be one of the characters...

It will be me and two other people, i wanted it to be a discovery of other peoples personalities as well as my own and it will be a more exciting adventure if i am taking part in it...in a way it is like I am becoming a child again getting to be in a comic book which i construct and get to do what i want and in a way i am giving the other two people a chance to be who they want and do what they want....

Next week shall be the first class critique and I aim to show my idea development what research I have been looking and and the experiments that i have done so that i can get feedback on how I am doing so far... Am I going towards the right track.

Questions I plan to ask the class are:
 Would you prefer an online comic or hard copy?


I might cut down the number of characters to 2 so i will end up with a maximum of 6 individualistic characters..... the main thing is just to show 3 different personas so it would not matter if I took part... i shall leave myself out of the comic book and base it on two chosen people...

Logo Designing

When annotating my sketchbook page on Dark Horse Comics I was drawn towards the logo for Dark Horse Comics which had me thinking i might as well start designing a logo for my comic book. I liked the look of  The Umbrella Academy logo crest which got me looking into heraldic crests and other type of crests. I was not too sure on what to create so experiment with different ways of arranging the letters A and E which would stand for Alter Ego....Alter Ego Productions...Alter Ego Comics maybe....then i had an idea of turning the word into Japanese.... I thought of having alter ego in Japanese because it reminded me of Japanese Manga which is similar to comic books....and i wanted a symbolic look that crests have...simply by changing the words from English to Japanese. I placed the Japanese word for alter ego in illustrator where i could make the words bigger and printed it off...i was experimenting different ways of creating a face with the words so that the letters would be the eyes of a face...but it was not working too well so keeping in the theme of Manga i looked online for images on how to draw Manga which i roughly followed....the letters now acted as part of the eyes of the character i had created...However i went on to create other graphic looking illustrations and patters which were loosely linked to the crest designs on top of the piece i had made.... I had advise from a peer that i could still use the drawing as a logo if i scan it into the computer and then repeat a part of it to create some type of flower looking thing...A logo...simple to the eye..then a closer look reveals much more.

Rough Noir illustrations

Having looked at some noir comics on monday i was not happy with what i was creating ...my experiments did not look very noir ..black and white looking at the way shadows affect an image... so i decided to do what i was doing yesterday with the tablet pen... creating very rough illustrations...but instead i was using a fine liner and i really like the effect the roughness has, i created really interesting pieces and as i began getting more comfortable with just letting the pen be, i could create texture and pattern... maybe the rough sketch way could be how i create my comic. I also looked at some personality tests which i will incorporate into my questionnaire for the superhero and villain character search.

Getting started with experiments

In my drawing lesson i finished annotating my alien design sheets..explaining what i looked at - what influenced ,me then i went onto experimenting with some left over ink i had used to go over the jelly fish (part of the design sheet). I had been looking into noir comics and noir films so made some noir looking drawings with the white ink which i quite liked because they are simple and quick which would be pretty useful when trying to make a comic book in the amount of time i have...i then went on to working on black paper with white and black conte which created a ghostly effect which my teacher and peers like ...that may be an option of how i create my comic book...i could just scan these in and resize them..to place in my comic... I also had advise from my drawing teacher on how i could start constructing the layout of my comic... The piece i made yesterday of a girls with a breathing mask on my teacher suggested i could photocopy it and re-structure it in different parts much like a puzzle...i really like this idea because it makes an image tell a story in a much more in-depth way....e.g. zooming into the story...i shall experiment more with this....

In C.A.D, i had a go at using the tablet pen just getting used to the feel of it.At first i placed an image on the tablet and was drawing around it...but it wasn't looking very good and it wouldn't be my work so i went onto trying to create very rough lined images which i liked the look of they were quick and had a sense of character...so i went on to make an A3 character page with different characters made up which where roughly made bu the tablet...done on photoshop.