Design Class

This class had a LOT of art, so I'm not going to bother posting all of it up. Basically we just were given some critical thinking tasks in order to get a better handle on design principles. What makes a composition more interesting and engaging to look at? That kind of thing. 

Oh and the catch: the whole class was entirely traditional art... After I've finally discovered I am most definitely more comfortable with digital art... But I do enjoy a good challenge I suppose.

The final project consisted of an entire chunk of pre-production concept art. We had to choose from a character design project, environmental design project, or a storyboard project. I chose to do a character because I have a lot of fun with that sort of thing.

We were also given a fairy tale to work from, along with a choice of two characters. My fairy tale was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" by the Grimm Brothers. I won't spoil the story for you, but the characters I did were the Old Soldier and the Youngest Princess. So here is some of the art I had to create to design these characters:

These silhouettes were done first to block out some different shapes and styles and get a feel for what best represents the character you are trying to create.

 

Next, I chose a few of each that I liked the most and did some rough drafts. This gave me a more clear idea of what they would all look like. Now for the final decision.

Here's where the heavy duty concept art comes into play. Above we've got full character turn arounds, expression sheets, and facial canon changes (to play with different face shapes and styles). Once the character is pretty solid, we get the final concept renders:

And voila! That's a very basic idea of how character design pre-pro works. If anyone out there is looking to design some characters, I have one bit of advice for you: learn how to use construction shapes! They are absolutely the most important tool for drawing characters consistently. I always hated the idea, but now I am obsessed with laying out my characters in construction shapes first, then working on top of that. Even when the characters are as simple as the ones I did above.

But anyways....I'm exhausted. Too much concept art crammed into one week. And now I am bombarded with too much concept art to be crammed into another week (with Mother's Day this weekend on top of that!!) So I am going to go fall into a dreamless oblivion before I get back to work, haha...

Oh right...Final grade for Methods of Design? 97.84!

Zzzzzz.......