16/ Finalising concepts

 

With the inspiration boards and the environmental research, I began to thumbnail some compositions for the final drawing. The second picture was my favourite version as the eye is brought to the characters despite the background having details that tell you a bit of their story. I tried to encapsulate Momotaro's story by depicting the family in a village setting in a rural area of Japan where the story may be set, hence the simplistic building and basic surroundings.

 

Colour key

I really struggled with perspective of this layout which is why the back building changed from the initial thumbnail to the colour key, hopefully it's an improvement.

Final concept

Black and white of final concept

Character Line up

Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my practical in regards to applying the knowledge learnt through my essay and applying it to the designs. The character and background designs are well thought out and researched in order to depict the cultural story correctly: social status, clothing, animals, colours, housing materials, rural environment. I am especially pleased with the character designs. I'm glad that the environment is also rooted in cultural context (based on the islands that the macaque monkey is indigenous to) but aesthetically I would like to work on the colour and lighting of the final concept, as well as trying a more painterly technique. If I were to continue the project I would to continue making iterations to reach a style I am really pleased with, but this isn't poignant to the cultural relevance of the essay.

Generally speaking I am happy with my workflow for this project, I'm fortunate that I started a lot of research before term started so I was able to start writing my essay earlier, which was a bonus as my essay is pretty long. I have included a summary of the rough schedule that I worked to, although there was catching up involved where life restrictions came up. I stayed ahead of my essay which allowed me to keep editing my essay as I went. I found the weeklys really useful in keeping me accountable of my work, in order to have something to show. I made sure to upload my practical progress as I went on so that I was always ready for a crit and could easily track what I'd done.

This final week also consisted of finalising and formatting my essay after getting some help with proof reading.

15/ Finalising Characters & Thumbnailing Concepts

This week has been focussed on finalising my practical-

I continued to do some colour explorations for the characters having researched what was relevant at the time in regards to clothing/clothing/patterns at the time for the social standing that they were.

I then asked a group of people what their favourite colour combinations were for each character as I couldn't decide what worked best. From the top options I then picked the three that worked best in unison. Following from what Sophie fed back to me last week, I then adjusted the colours slightly so that they all shared similar colours and patterns as a family, but without being too identical.
I also darkened the skin tone slightly as I felt that was more accurate to the characters who have probably worked outside for all their lives.

Final coloured line up of the human characters

I then developed each character through expression and pose sheets, and created a turn around for the protagonist of the story.

In order to start the final concept drawing, I collated some references to help me start thumbnailing.

14/ Character Designs Progress

-I have roughly completely chapter 3, so once I've edited it slightly I can get some tutor feedback. Once I've made more progress on my practical I can consider writing the chapter synthesising my practical from my essay research.

 Experiments with face proportions and designs, taking some inspiration from other historical designs and seeing if I can push the proportions whilst still making him seem: Brave, Courageous, Selfless, Kind, Youthful.

The colours in this set of experiments are taken from other Momotaro depictions, I added them to my design to see which colours and patterns I favoured in order to know which ones to bring forward to the final designs. I've been researching into the historical meaning and changes in the fashions, patterns and colours of Edo Period Japan to ensure that it is culturally correct. Fortunately for me, this is when the bright patterned fabrics were in fashion for both men and women so I can brighten up the designs. 

At the weekly feedback it was suggested to me that I dissect the patterns of the parents and give some motifs to the sons designs. I think this would be a nice symbolic design choice, especially because when designing Momotaro I tried to incorporate some facial features from both the Mother and Father. He has the general face and body structure of the Father, but more youthful. For example they have similar body types except he stands taller and is more filled out in the legs and torso so that his clothes don't hang off of him. This also means that the son has a different silhouette too, especially with the different hairstyle. 

13/ COP Practical Progress

- Chapter 3 of the essay: Exploring the reasons cultural representation has continued in the way it has and whether it can be deconstructed. Below is some of the resources that I need to rationalise together.
- Chapter 1 and 2 are progressing well and mainly need to be edited down. After the tutor feedback: a few grammatical corrections need to be made, referencing to be checked, more images to be included, words to be cut (where there are paragraphs explaining more examples of a point being made so not crucial). I need to keep referring back to animation where I use live action as example.
- Mike has said to look at: Kim's Convenience & Total Drama.
- The documentary about the Simpson's stereotypical south asian character Apu by Comedian Hari Kondabolu. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/lifelong-simpsons-fan-hari-kondabolu-explores-problem-apu-new-doc-n816216
- The three images are current research that I'm reading for my essay.

Practical Progress

I continued finalising the animal designs, adding colour and rough character sheets for all three. 

MOTHER: Initially I experimented with more interesting silhouettes but remembered that the floor length
kimono was always intended to be a cylindrical shape. I found a more interesting silhouette through a
hunched back and the head shape. As much as I want her to be hunched from years of work, she is not a

timid woman so I wanted to show her chin raised proudly. I intend on pushing proportions

whilst making the characters based on real life. Long neck, once very elegant.

Character development

Taking the chosen side profile I tried to explore what this would mean her face looks like front on.
Looking at old paintings from the time they often showed women to have long noses, small foreheads
and oval shaped heads, something I can assume must've been what was considered beautiful at the
time. I experimented with different proportions for the facial features for both the mother and father,
whilst trying to refine my favourites as I went along. I tried to incorporate different eye shapes, being
careful not to play into any racial stereotyping throughout the design process.

With my knowledge from my research into the dynamics of society in the Edo period you can see that

(above) I have assigned short character backgrounds to the characters to help inform how they will be

portrayed. I also tried to ensure that their silhouettes were distinguishable.

12/ Initial Designs

-Starting practical, taking inspiration from Nicolas Marlet's ability to stylise animal characters
-Looking at Japanese sculptures of Momotaro to check cultural accuracy again
-Deciding characteristics of animal characters, what would've been indigenous to Japan and how those animals usually interact. This meant looking at how a pheasant would fight/act/move and the same for the other two
-Considering what physical attributes are inherent to the animal looking recognisable.
-Looking at Japanese dog breeds, relevant to the heritage of the story: Hokkaido (hunters) Akita(Loyal) Shiba Inu (hunter) Kai Ken (less independent, is intelligent) Spitz (companion)
I chose the Hokkaido for its strong structure and hunting ability, necessary for this fighting story.

fig 1

-Continuing essay writing for submission (Intro and 2 chapters written and edited for first draft).

Fig.1 shows the initial notes I made for the characters, and the characteristics that I felt were necessary for translating the breed across.






-I have recently got skillshare, trying to learn how to strengthen my character designs as much as possible. A couple classes that stuck out were by Melissa Lee and Tom Bancroft.

  PRESENTATION of Practical Progress so far

I chose the Japanese macaque because it is indigenous to the hills of Japan, a species inherent to the country. It's also often the species that is depicted in the other tellings of Momotaro, as far as I can tell.

I chose this Japanese dog breed called the Hokkaido instead of the others (Akita, Shiba Inu, Kai Ken, Tossa Inu, Spitz) because it is known for being a hunters, which I felt would be more useful to the protagonist than a less independent dog such as the Kai Ken or a companion dog like the Spitz. It is big in stature and an intelligent, loyal breed which is everything that this character needed to be.

I'm really happy with where these designs are going, I'm really trying to focus on translating across their personalities and trying to push proportions whilst understanding the skeletons of the animals.
I wanted the animals to be full of character and expression like in Kung Fu Panda, however they still act as animals and can't communicate with humans which is why they aren't anthropomorphized to a human level, it's more like Avatar Last Airbender-esque. My version is a PG show, kid friendly, where the characters need to be full of character, as if these designs were being proposed for a full seasoned show of Momotaro.

After tutorial with Mike:
Unsure of how my animal designs were relevant to my essay, it has made it clear that I really need to stress why I have chosen this for my practical response. The point is stressing the importance of retelling a cultural story accurately and respectfully, which is what I will be putting into practice by not relying on stereotypes and doing my research on the time period.

I needed to stress that the animals are just representing animals so there is no worry about causing offense, but because they aren't putting what I've learnt into practice as much as human characters, but they do serve the story, I will approach these as side characters with less in depth designs as I bring in designs for Momotaro and his parents on top of the 3 animals.

I have been consistently trying to watch some Skillshare videos on character and background design whilst I work on these designs, including these below by Tom Bancroft, Melissa Lee, Jonas de Ro...

11/ Research assisting my practical