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.