Week 8: Dichotomous Characters

New project this week, I was pretty pumped after my last one, ready to go all out for this one. However after the lecture I found I was a bit deflated. Characters? They're least favourite thing. But I decided to pick myself up and look at the brief properly.

We have to design a pair of characters, which work well together and are visually shown to exist in the same world, bit be as dichotomous as possible, contrasting in as many ways a possible. They have to have an emphasis on their storytelling and narrative potential. We only have to model and texture one, the other is a stretch goal.

I was well and truly stuck so I just, thought. What won't I get bored with? Vikings. So I began to research vikings on interest for some visual inspiration, and my pinterest board developed from viking warriors to forest people to shamans and old people.

I came up a old shaman lady and a big brass warrior seeking her aid on a quest, so I made 2 mood boards to narrow down my inspirations. Also made a style board as I came to the conclusion quite quickly I wanted to do stylized rather than realistic characters

Shaman

Warrior

Style

After this and speaking to my one of my tutors I made a quick shape kit and began to put the other basic shapes to create very basic character silhouettes.

Shape Kit

Silhouettes

I then drew over the top of the silhouettes to get an idea of how I could use these shapes as body parts and features of potential characters. This was really really rough.

First Concepts

I then asked my peers for some feedback as to which had the strongest silhouettes and features so I could choose a few to take forward and develop.

As shown by the feedback, the 3rd from the left top and the 2nd from the right on the bottom got the most positive feedback. Also I subconsciously made the pringles guy. These are the two main I will be taking forward to develop, not only because of the feedback, but they were also my gut feeling potential awesomeness designs.