Stage 3 Designs – Side Characters ‘Creating the Afflicted, The Leech merchant and The Pestilence’

As mentioned in my previous post Stage 3 – An Average Journey: a short animation on Social Anxiety the central aesthetic theme of the animation is disease and the plague. Based on the phrase of ‘Avoiding X like the plague’ I wanted to depict the social aspects I was avoiding in a sort of ‘Social disease’ theme. So naturally what the main character avoids would be diseased or afflicted in some sort of way. this is where i started my idea.

I knew I wanted to give my characters a sort of atrophied and sickly look to them. While playing around with ideas I was shown the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti more specifically his sculptures depicting people and crowds as withered almost burned looking creatures.

 

From these sculptures they looked very similar to a concept I was working on for the creatures in my work.

With these ideas in mind I created the ‘Afflicted’ the common face of the crowd and the carriers of the ‘social disease’. I made theme a lot taller than the main character to give them a more imposing look. They’re atrophied in comparison to the main characters full body and all have buboes that act as their eyes, this is to link the avoiding eye con act part of social anxiety to the Afflicted as a sort of symptom both they and the main character share as the action (Afflicted) and effect (main character).

Giving them varied looks such as medical equipment or embellishments as well as making them interact with their environment to make them more life like, I even designed on of them to act as a sort of “tool”. Then another idea for a character came to mind that stemmed from being forced into social interactions in the form of the ‘Leech Merchant’.

The Leech Merchant came to mind when I was thinking of different aspects of social anxiety I wanted to display in my animation. Being forced into social situation can be uncomfortable and can cause anxiety in some individuals, I’ve had it time to time, and one of the biggest offenders I personally find is when I walk through town and get obstructed or greeted by a street canvasser. They’re usually polite and most people just ignore them, but I always get a bitter taste in my mouth and start to plan my walk ahead when I catch one in my peripheral sight as I find talking to them can be tiring or has caused me mild anxiety. This is where this special sort of Afflicted came to mind unlike the other Afflicted the Merchant has both its eyes, looks relatively ‘normal’ and has loose skin that wraps around like a robe of some kind.

The Idea behind this is that The Leech Merchant will at some point block the Main characters progression. I want the Merchants movements to be quite dramatic and animated, like it creeps into shot, as a lot of street canvassers tend to slide into peoples way to get them to stop. The more normalized look (when compered to the Afflicted) is that street canvassers tend to put on a happy face and lull you into joining whatever they are peddling or buying into something using certain phrases and body language, hence the pulled back ‘smiling’ face. As for the leeches they represent the draining effect unwanted or forced social interaction can have on an individual and that they drain the ‘calm’ away. I also wanted to make the Merchant spew a sort of miasma out when it talks as another portrayal of social aspects being infectious or disease like.

To get more realistic crowd actions and drawings I want into town one day to draw from life.

This is where I came up with ‘Pestilence’. I wanted to also make it looks like the environment was also acting  against the character such as the Giant Afflicted being used as a sort of Search light. So I knew I wanted to add a non human creature into the mix and the first idea I had was the obvious plague rat, but I didn’t have any rats on hand to use as a reference. So instead I used the ‘Rats with wings’ or pigeons to become my plague spreaders. The idea came about from one of my influences Masahiro Ito and the Silent Hill series he worked on. In Silent Hill it’s not just the monsters that are opposing you but the way the story and environment is set up it’s like the Ton it’s self is against you. I wanted to pay homage to this and created Pestilence as another background element.

The creature has elements of a flea (a throw back to the spread of the plague), and another metaphorical parasite. They also have giant protruding eyes that fix on the character a representation of prolonged eye contact and the overwhelming sense of being judged on something.

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 3 Designs – Main Character ‘The Plague doctor’

As mentioned in my previous post Stage 3 – An Average Journey: a short animation on Social Anxiety the central aesthetic theme of the animation is disease and the plague and I wanted to depict the main character as a plague doctor. Taking the phrase ‘Avoiding X like the plague’ I applied this to the central theme of my animation depicting my experience with Social anxiety.

  

The core theme I wanted to depict in my character was the isolation and detachment from my surroundings both environmental and social. I used the idea of a plague doctors attire to help express these themes as they would truss themselves up in protective garb that would be almost air tight, to avoid the ‘Miasma’ that spread the disease before they discovered the real spread of the disease. This meant that Plague doctors would be cut off from there environment and their patients, never making contact.

Using this I designed outfits around the idea of isolating the character while also making it look heavy and restrictive.

The mask was also an important part of the design. Plague doctors would use the mask to not only keep out the ‘miasma’ but also stuff it with things like dried herbs or other odious items to keep out the stench of death and decay. My idea behind the mask was to use it like a sort of disguise and cage of sorts. The idea that it hides my true emotions and facial reactions toward others and hide away from society as to not draw attention to myself. On the other hand it also serves as a way of averting my gaze and avoiding eye contact with other as well as being a metaphor for being trapped inside my own head, by my own head.

After some concepts and design choices I settled on this design;

This was my final choice for the characters design for a few different reasons. First of all it was fully concealed in his attire and protected from his surroundings. Second the clothing looked quite heavy and weighty enforcing that trapped and restricted feeling such as the weighty shackles around the arm and heavy plates on the boots. Third the mask was given an welded and bolted look to it with a sort of caged section on the underside of the nose as well as the eyes being ‘caged’ to avoid the eye contact of others. I made the overall outfit look closer to a plague doctors attire but I added elements to it to personalise it and to bring it closer to my clothing, like the scarf and hood combo in place of the cowl and hat.

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 3 Influences – Piotr Dumala

One of my influences for animation is the Polish animator Piotr Dumala. I’m particularly inspired by the style in his animations such as my main inspiration Sciany (Walls) an animation created by Dumala.

 

Dumala creates his animations using a unique technique known as destructive animation. This technique creates frames that cannot be replicated that makes the piece itself unique. He achieves this by painting plaster board black and placing it under a camera, he then scratches the frame into the paint before painting it black again.

Dumala stated that his animations have consistency relating to the logic behind dreams and his own mind including his obsessions, dreams and anxieties while also identifying with the character whether they be a literary figure or not. This fits in well with my topic of self reflection and expressing my own anxieties through a visual media. I like the sketchy unsettling style he uses for his pieces as I find they are both emotionally charged and visually striking.

 

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 3 Influence – Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian artist who drew a lot of portraits both of himself and of sitters. He was considered to be one of the leading artists in the Austrian Expressionist movement due to his drawing style and the strong themes of sexuality surrounding his work.

Schiele’s work explored his subjects own psyche and sexuality, a trait shared by his primary influence and mentor Gustav Klimt. Schiele also did a lot of self portraiture which he used as a sort of self analysation quoted from an review by Friedrich Stern in 1912;

“And he has a self-portrait which is difficult to make out for the simple reason that the rot he feels he must show his youthful face in the grip has advanced too far. It’s all very sad…”

Schiele used his portraits as a sort of reflection of ones other self. He used this as a way to keep his identity but also express his other self in his portraits.

 

Schiele’s work interested me as the style and depictions he used for his self and his subject were more emotionally charged and depicted the unseeable side of the subject. This paired with his self reflective work related to my topic of tackling a side of me I don’t often talk to people about very often. I find his style a great influence to depict the mental side of my social anxiety and the emotions it can create.

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 3 Influence – Masahiro Ito

Masahiro Ito was the creature designer and art director for Konami’s famous psychological horror series Silent hill. He designed the backgrounds and some creature designs for Silent hill 1, and was the art director and creature designer for Silent hills 2 and 3.

Silent hill has heavy psychological aspects in it’s design for both theme and design. The idea is that the town itself is like a personal purgatory or hell for certain characters and each characters interpretation of there surroundings and physical manifestation of there fears, desires and psychological traits, especially that in the ‘Otherworld’.

 

One of Ito’s biggest influences according to Alchamilla Hospital a website dedicated to the silent hill franchise and it’s creators, was the film Jacobs Ladder (1990). This is seen through his work on the backgrounds and creatures such as distorted and missing features and humanoid creatures that caged in frames. Ito managed to create creatures that not only became these manifestations of the characters psyche but a also managed to create a sense of horror and disgust amongst players and are considered some of the best monster designed of for a horror game.

 

His work on the creature design for the Silent hill series is very influential to myself as both an aspiring character designer and to my current project. I aim to create characters embodying traits based on social anxiety much like the creatures based off of psychological traits, human thoughts and emotions seen in Silent hill.

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 3 – An average journey: A short animation on social anxiety

For stage 3 I wanted to tackle something to do which fitted into my interest in character design while also diving into some animation work. I was stuck for a little while on what to theme the short on but eventually settled on theming around my own experience with social anxiety.

For my final major project I wanted to create a small animation to reflect my own personal view and feelings when I travel out in public by my self. I have had social anxiety for a long time and like many others who also live with SA I manage it in my own way. I will be using my own ideas on how I see the world with my own “mental vision”, this will be done around the things that bother me the most being depicted like a “disease” and how I “treat” and protect myself from it.

I want the main character to be depicted like a plague doctor traveling out among the “sick” and “afflicted” to reach some sort of destination. It will be aesthetically themed around Gothic Medieval aesthetics with expressionist undertones but adapted to my drawing style. As I will be depicting modern technology in parts of the story so I will also adapt a steampunk theme into the visuals as well.

  

Hopefully this animation will give people a view into my own thoughts and feelings of my surroundings with my current mental state and evoke a response in some way. I will start by taking another look into the symptoms of social anxiety, looking into artists, taking photos for backdrops, walk cycles and posture as well as looking up visual info for my designs.

Until we converse again stranger.

Breaking boundaries – Working outside my sketchbook.

For part of Stage 2 I had to push my chosen media and work into more experimental and unexplored territory. With my current work I had been exclusively working in my sketchbook as my original idea was to creating a sort of detailed journey though a creative process using 24 as a design quota for key areas of my characters design.

To push this I was given a task of creating at least 3 life size pieces outside of my sketchbook to stretch my work into the more experimental zone and to push not only my idea but my media choices as well. This first piece I created was a set of 3 quick studies of my lead character in different poses and media choices to get a feel of how drawing in this size felt. I don’t tend to work this big usually and working on an vertical surface felt very alien and at times uncomfortable and frustrating.

Though I started to adapt to this new way of working and decided to use the scale to allow me to add more detail into the clothing of my character to create a more believable functionally as well as a more detailed look at the attire she would be wearing on her adventure. I found creating the initial sketch in charcoal and using chalk pastels and sketching sticks to create colour, tone and a smooth blended finish to match the inspired style of work to be the best choice when creating these pieces.

   

Working in a life size scale does have it’s benefits and I am glad I attempted to tackle this new way of working as it got me looking at the finer detail of my work as well as using unconventional methods of working to get a new view on my designs. Though despite this working in life size was still a frustrating experience as I tend to work better on smaller pieces especially when it comes to proportion.

Until we converse again stranger.

Stage 2 – Update 2

Through my work on stage two I have had to make some changes to what my final outcome my work will be.

First of all the work will no longer be 24 of each design point as time constraints for my portfolio, University preparation and the actual interview as well as my own personal life and job have hindered my free time in completing my original idea. 24 has now become more of a starting point for my work which has led me down the character design and game asset design path allowing me to explore creating various designs based on key ideas and phrases as well as ideas I wanted to express in my work.

Also due to these time constraints I have decided to narrow the final designs down to just one final character from both a male and a female character to just a female one. This is because I want to create a well designed female character and the female design was further down the creative process than the male one was.

I started to work outside my sketchbook to cover criteria I wasn’t meeting in my work as well as pushing my usual boundaries by working on life size pieces which I will create a post on this subject too.

I will no longer looking into 3D modeling in this stage because of time constraints and unfamiliarity of software involved. If possible this could be something I tackle in stage 3 if applicable.

My Final piece will still be at least one final concept piece of my character but mounted and placed center stage next to my work books in my area as the life size pieces would draw too much attention away from the final product.

Also as I have been without my computer for the last five days my work has unfortunately been set back. Now I have it back I will be focusing on completing the work I have been unable to complete. Hopefully this won’t be too much of a set back to my final idea.

Until we converse again stranger.

Influences – Tamara de Lempicka

For stage 2 I looked into Art Deco and Dieselpunk as a style influences for the final design of my character.

As mentioned in my previous post I wanted to use an artists who from the 1920’s – 30’s who could capture not only the decade but also the style of the time in there work to influence the style of my own creations. I came across this portrait artist who was very prominent in the 1920’s and 30’s who adapted the cubism style of artists like Picasso into her portraiture. This artists name was Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish born painter and the first female artist to become a glamour star.

 

Lempicka gained notoriety in the 20’s for her unique style of cubism inspired portraits referred to as “soft cubism” her style may have been inspired by the cubism movement, but she found that impressionist artists could not draw and that they used “dirty colours”. Lempicka has always set out to make her work unique and would never copy another artists style or technique exactly, this is why her work in comparison to impressionists work was clean, precise and elegant.

Lempicka’s work did not only gain her notoriety for her style and technique but has also made her one of the key artist for the Art Deco movement and even inspired some of the stylistic choices for the ‘Burial at Sea’ DLC for Bioshock Infinite, a game with a heavy theme of art deco and the fantasy 1920’s – 30’s Dieslepunk style.

I was going to use a stylistic influence from the era I have set for my work on stage 2 and Lempicka’s work really stood out for capturing the glamour and “hollywood” feel of the time. I found her style was perfect for capturing the excitement and stylish action I wanted to root into the final pieces of my character.

Until we converse again stranger.