PowerPoint Presentation

Overall I think the presentation went well, though there were some stuff I could of added like: showing different versions of my design in different colours to show how I made my colour palette as well as adding more peer feedback from not just my friends.   


*not the same presentation i presented- original presentation lost- these are recreations of some of the slides that I could remember*  

Character Design

 This is my final character design. She is a mixture of the three character designs I drawn combined. Not only are their looks combined, but their personality and back-story is also a combination of all the three. However, I did get some clothing inspiration for the design on her top, sleeves and gloves from a wall design. (did not manage to get an image) For her face design, I took inspiration from my artist research mainly for the eyes as I felt that they were bold, seeing as when people first look at someone they focus the eyes,  I thought that making them the biggest feature on the face would draw more attention to her. I wanted her face to convey her personality. How she can look shy and innocent one minute, but then rather flirty and confident the next. When it came to her body shape, I decided to make her as rabbit like as possible by giving her longer legs than a torso. The short legged clothing defines her long legs as they are a main asset to her character without making her the typical "sexy female superhero."

This is my second character design, I wanted to make something more unusual. Instead of making her face match her personality, I gave her a trait that effects the face directly which ties in with her personality. Looking at my research, my audience wanted quite a quirky character. So I thought that making a character who is blind could build up her character development and personality. Due to her blindness, her clothing is different as well as her attitude. It also helps others who suffer from blindness relate to someone who is blind but is up beat and finds strength in her weaknesses. I wanted to make her quite innocent and fainthearted but finds happiness and strength no matter the issue shes up against because of her dark past. As for her weapon, I based it off the weapon used by the main character of the program my characters are based from. Since she is blind, I wanted to give her a weapon she could easily use with out being too over powered or define logic. I thought a scythe would be best as its a fairly easy weapon to yield. 



This was my first design. I was planning to use this design as my final design overall as I loved the idea behind her as well as her clothing design. But after looking at other character designs, I decided that I could create something better that wasn't too over complicated and took away from her personality. For this character, I wanted to give her quite a strong interest which ended up being technology.  I incorporated that into her clothing so my audience understand straight away what this character is about. Not only does her clothing show her interest, but her weapon shows it as well. I wanted to make a character that wasn't quite as upbeat as the others so I thought for a change, why not make a character that's rather shy then slowly develops into a outgoing individual.  

As for this design, this was the design that inspired my final character most. Her clothes were simplex but her personality made up for that. The fact that she has rabbit ears makes her stand out among other characters in the graphic novel and my other character designs. Though it still fits within the logic of that graphic novel as it does have some characters that are human with animal like traits. Her weapon wasn't inspired by anything nor had anything really unique about it since at this stage I had already decided the weapon of choice for my final character. But, i did put a lot of effort into the design of her face/hair as that's the part of a character people notice most. I tried to include as many rabbit traits as possible. For example the whiskers and having a longer legs rather then a torso to get across that she can jump high.   

This is a head set design by an artist I got recommended to me (name is on the sheet.) Though I never ended up using it in my final design, The pattern on the side inspired the pattern I put on my final design. 

Evaluation

For this project, we were asked to make anything we wanted using the skills we have learnt throughout the year. For this, I decided to make a character using the skills I learnt in graphics when we made character designs for a video game. I chose this as I felt that I could put all my effort into it as I enjoy doing it and I could provide a lot of work for it as there's a lot that needs to be done for it. But it wasn't just a normal character design sheet. Once I had the final design I animated the final character as I wanted it to stand out among other character designs. 

Firstly, I started by looking into other turnaround sheets to get some idea as to how a character design is laid out. It gave me an ideas to what to include and what poses I should put my character in. I decided to go with simple poses that show the body from different angles along with a palette of the colours I used. However, when designing the characters, I drawn them in a pose, did a close up of the face and drawn the weapon. I also wrote a short brief of their backstory to get a gist of their personality. This was to help me decide what type of character I wanted to create for my final design. 

To improve my characters design, I looked at different character designs and one of my favorite artists who is also an animator and character designer. After testing out the artist Asurocks style, I tried the style in different materials so I could decide what would be best to do my final character design in. I decided to go with just graphics. I particularly liked the way she would draw a female face, so I thought that combining the way she draws faces with my own style will give me the face I need to match the characteristics of my character perfectly. 
Not only did the artist help me, but looking at other character designs helped me look at different styles I could draw as well as clothing and facial expressions. 

When it came to my final design, I decided to combine all my character designs. I took different aspects from the three different designs to try and create a character that mostly appealed to my audience that I asked. 
I started with a few rough sketches trying to include what my audience wanted. I later developed them and added certain features like weakness' and strengths along with more detail to their clothing. I tried to incorporate as much of their personality in their clothing as possible so I didn't have to fully depend on their facial features telling the audience their personality. For example, I designed a girl who adored technology, so I put a circuit design on some parts of her clothing as well as giving her a computer screen as a mask. 
Once the character designs were done, I drawn a rough character using the best parts from each character. I later developed this and drawn it digitally. From here, I went onto deciding her weapon and backstory. Since my character was made for the graphic novel RWBY, I tried to relate her backstory to match somewhat of the characters that already exist. After getting her backstory and traits done, I altered her face to give off her flirty, elegant personality. i also looked into what poses would convey her particular traits more. Since i have trouble with poses, I looked up an artist and used their templates as reference. 
This is when I started designing the turnaround sheet, I took the poses I thought would show the body from good angles and looked at different pallets. I eventually designed my own through trail and error. Using ibisPaint X, I was able to create a turnaround sheet I was proud of. I used the  standard brush tool to get the base colour of the design, the smudge tool to create large areas of shading and the air brush tool to add a bit more shading to ares a missed as well as a light pink taint in my characters cheeks. Looking at her design, I thought she looked rather plain and that her clothes didn't quite show her elegance. I asked around and I got recommended to add some jewellery. I thought that gold would compliment the dark blue and grey so that was the colour I used.       
Looking back at my turnaround sheet, I  realised that there was a lot that I could improve on, for example the side angle. She didn't look like the same character. In the future, I will try to avoid this by drawing the face multiple times. 

As for the animation I made using Photoshop (that ended up not working so I had to use a website on Google), I thought that I could of done far better if I had only managed my time better. The overall animation came out rushed and some of the line art was missing from one of the frames as well as part of her clothing missing from all frames. I didn't draw enough frames, resulting in the animation looking choppy. This is something I will practice in the future. The animation in the end ended up having 200-300 delay but because of the lack of frames it looked as if it was lagging. Overall, I am satisfied with the design but not with the final piece seeing as my time could of been managed better. 
   

Final Character Design

Overall, I like the design and the detail that went into it. However, the bottom pose didn't quite look like the other two poses. But luckily enough they all look similar so my audience can tell they're the same person. I felt that I could of spent more time on drawing the design as the outline work is quite sloppy but the shading is okay.

Brain Storm

 

*No longer a game character - is now a character for a series called RWBY*

Turnaround Sheet

When coming up with the poses for my turnaround sheet, I looked at various different turnaround sheets and realised most of them was just the character in the same pose just at different angles. So, I wanted to change mine so that my character was doing a different pose each time. This proved difficult. Not only because of my lack of knowledge when it came to anatomy, but because trying to get the face and hair to look the same each drawing was fairly hard.

Link to me drawing the first pose of my character design:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I9dIKNuNQg

To help when it came to anatomy, I decided to use a template I found on DeviantArt. 

All credit for the poses to this artist (all poses for my character design is from this sheet): 
http://aomori.deviantart.com/art/Female-poses-chart-148057265

After getting the basic pose done, I spent majority of my time figuring out how I could get across her personality in the three poses I had that also matches the position of the pose. After solving that, I realised that her design was too plain. After getting other peoples opinions on what I should add, I decided to give her some golden jewellery as I thought that it really stood out against the blue and gave her character a more interesting look. 

Artist Research

These are some sketch work I found in a magazine by an artist I soon recognised as AsuRocks. Because I loved her style so much, I decided to copy some of her art work taken from these two pages while also testing out different materials to see which would best fit for my final character design. The drawings below are copied art work from both her website and these two magazine pages. I then looked at what materials I have and decided what material should be best for each drawing. In the end, I thought that my watercolour was the best and that I should not only include a digital design of my character, but a watercolour piece showing my character in another pose too.

AsuRocks also happens to be an animator and game designer along with being an illustrator so I thought she would be a very interesting artist to look into and get inspired by. 

Primary Research

To find out what my audience likes most, I conducted a survey for my primary research so I can get an insight as to what my character should act/look like etc. These are a few of the questions I asked to see roughly what my audience wants to see. 

Looking at this result, mu audience prefer my character to be female. And seeing as either is close yet no one picked male, all my character design work will be female. I personally think doing a female character will be enjoyable as when it comes to drawing people, I can draw females rather well but drawing males is difficult so this works to my favor. 

My results show that most of my audience either dont mind if my character has distinctive traits or not. However, more people voted yes then no. I will try to incorporate a character trait (e.g. being deaf) to my final character to make it more interesting for the viewers. 

When it came to what makes a good character design, majority of the people who took  the survey selected 'All the above.' When it comes to the design process, I will try to include as much detail as possible into the different areas of the character so my audience can see how much work went into the design. Plus, it also makes it more interesting for the audience if the character design isn't just a plain turnaround sheet.

Character Research

 
DJ Sona (League of Legends)

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/

The design for this character was actually inspired by the Hatsune Miku character design. I love the idea of a changing colour helmet and the over the top colours. I feel that it makes this character stand out amongst most as her design actually changes in game. But it also has uniqueness to it despite being highly based off another existing character. When designing my own character, I want to incorporate some bright features from this character as I feel that it'd make my characters just that bit more eye catching.   





Weiss Schnee (RWBY)

http://roosterteeth.com/show/rwby

I love this design of the character overall, especially the jacket she wears due to the red on the inner collar as it stands out against the pale blue and white of her clothes. Fans of the show like this character in particular, not only because of her personality but because her clothes really convey her personality and how she is from a high class background. The theme of ice on her clothes connotes that she has a cold personality so before the audience hears her speak, they already partly understand what type of characteristics she has.  I will defiantly look back at this character design when making my own character design as its bold and unique but is also from the show my character design is based from. I believe this character is remember-able for her character design more than her personality. 




Homura Akemi (Puella Madoka Magica) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puella_Magi_Madoka_Magica

I like the top design for this character as it somehow suits the personality of the character. It's flattering without being revealing which is kind of unusual for female characters considering most show a lot of skin (which is not a bad thing.) It's complex without being too over complicated and could make any body type look good. Accessories can still be added to improve the look without taking away the characteristics of the design. When coming up with character designs I will look at this character again for inspiration as a lot of people who have seen this show liked this character in particular for her clothe design and distinctive look despite not being the overall main character. In conclusion, this character is remember-able for her character development during the series which tells me personality traits is what really sells a character and makes them more interesting to viewers.




Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid)

Miku is a highly popular pop-star idol in Japan but is also fairly popular in other countries. I reckon that due to her over the top look shes the most popular out of all the characters associated with Vocaloid (the digital band which she is from) Though she doesn't really have a personality or a backstory, she is shown through various songs which shows her development as a character. I think that it is crucial that a character develops slowly and doesn't just have one main personality throughout as that would get boring and tedious. Other characters like DJ Sona from league of Legends has also been inspired by the Hatsune Miku design. so when it comes to making my character design, I will try to include as many design traits as this character seeing as how popular she is.

Inspiring Images

I may take some ideas from this sketch as I love the idea of a screen for a head. The drawing style is also pleasing and not only does it show the character at different angles, but it also shows sections of the clothes in further detail with some description. Its fun to look at but also has a slight professional vibe to it. The only problem I have with it is that it doesn't have any colour so its not as eye catching.




I adore this art style and the use of colour. It shows the character at different angles but in different positions. I think the variety of poses makes the art more pleasing and eye catching so I will try to include this when i make my turn around sheet. I may also use part of their art style as I like the way they draw the mouth, eyes and hair of the character. I may use this art style when doing character design but for my final design I'd want to make it more realistically. The only issue I would change is that it would look better if they added detail and a colour palette of the colours they used.    




I like this style of art because its detailed and semi-realistic. Although, it is lacking in detail/description and could show the characters clothes separately along with the weapons. However, i like the angles used as they're not just standing still in a common pose. The close up of the face in detail is also a nice touch. I will remember to include that when I make my turnaround sheet. 

Proposal

After thinking about my options and looking at my past projects to see what my strengths were, I have finally decided to do character design. I found that character design was probably one of my strongest skills, not only that, but I also enjoyed doing to project immensely as well. So I figured that it would be something I could put all my effort into while having fun.  

For this, I will do multiple sketches of how the design is progressing, detailing what I have added to the character and what I have taken away. After I have a final sketch of the character, i will proceed to draw this character in multiple different styles as well as using different tools while doing so. For example, I will draw it in pencil, pen, digitally, markers and water colour etc. 
I not only plan to just do a detailed sketch of my game character, I plan to animate the final drawing as well using digital drawing software such as Photoshop. The reason why I want to animate the final design is because I believe it will grab more attention, as majority of people will (most likely) just do a drawing of a character design and develop that. I however, want to be a little different and try to expand my skills as animating is something I am passionate about. 

As for research, a survey will need to be taken so I can look into what my age range (target audience) likes. I will ask questions such as: 'Do you like realistic art or cartoon?' and 'What features make up a good game character?' 
I will also have to look into existing characters to see what makes them so popular, what I like about them and can include in my design as well as what the audience likes about that character design. E.g what are their dominant features that make them so recognizable.  

I want my work to look as professional and unique as possible when doing the 'turnaround sheets' as well as the final GIF image of the character. When it is finished, I want it to look detailed and well thought out and planned as I feel this will appeal more to others and show how much work went into making just one character.

When presenting it, I will put all my best sketches onto a black board. This should help my work stand out. As for the final animated drawing, I shall turn it into a GIF (moving image) and upload it to a website along with the other sketches i did to lead up to the final design.

This is a rough idea of how I want my Turnaround sheet to look. I like how it shows all angles and that the other drawings don't need colour to look good and professional. The main thing I would change is that they should either show a close up of the face or draw the clothes individually and annotate them. 

   

When I make my turnaround sheet, I want to add different facial expressions like how this turnaround sheet does. Although the design is simple, the art sells the character and gives you a feel of their personality. I will try to do this for my turnaround sheet as I want to get across the characteristics of the character.

Student Name: Chosen Theme: Title of Work:
Week / Date	In Class Activity	Independent Study
W/C April 27th 2015	Proposal Review with Tutor	Thursday 30th of April is an Interview day and students are not in.
W/C May 4th 2015	Look into popular game characters and write what I like about them, what the audience likes about them and what features of that character are most recognizable. Etc.	Monday 4th May  is a bank holiday and students are not in.
W/C May 11th 2015	Develop some quick sketches and rough designs for my character using certain elements from other popular characters. Make a ‘turnaround sheet.’	Look at other turnaround sheets to get inspiration.
W/C May 18th    2015	Finalize my design and draw that final design in multiple different materials. E.g digital, markers, water colour and pen. Work on the final drawing to be ready to animate.	Make multiple copies of a turnaround sheet.
W/C May 25th    2015	Half Term
W/C June 1st 2015	Complete Practical work
W/C June  8th   2015	Individual Presentation Deadline
W/C June  15th 2015	Deadline week-Check all work and hand in project	Friday 19th of June is an Interview Day and students are not in. Deadline: Group A: Thursday 18th June 2015 Group B: Thursday 18th June 2015.

(This was my original idea that I was going to do before I changed my plan.)

For my final major project, I have decided to make a music video to the song 'Nine in the afternoon'by Panic! at the disco. Although, instead of just using film, I will also be applying my own art by using the skill I learned in Premiere, which is the green screen. I figured if that the green screen technique can be used with film, it could also be used to apply animation/drawings onto a clip of film. 

In order to get more inspiration for my idea, I will look into the original music video for this song as well as other music videos that use drawing and animation. But I will also have to look into copyright issues as my end product could be presented publicly. I will have to make sure that using the entire song won't raise an issue. I might also take a survey including with this research as Primary research is more reliable. I will ask questions such as 'what do you think makes a good music video' as well as 'do you want the visuals to match to the lyrics?' This will be important as I will want my target audience of young teenagers to appreciate my work as much as possible.