colour scheme

After lots of different colour scheme choices i made a board so people could see the different ones and how they work so i could get feedback.
The general consensus of the class was that they thought the grey was best for the story as it is a boring dull colour which is what the bat is unhappy about. And the yellow eyes stand out well but after some discussing i suggested green eyes to portray his envy at the birds colours and everyone seemed to think this was a really good idea. All but one person said they prefer no texture too. A very helpful crit.
So here is the final colours.

Bat design

I decided to colour in my original bat idea as it is the one i feel most represents the characters personality at the moment. I may change bits. 

I have used a texture on the bats body to make him look a bit furry and then no texture on the wings to try and make them look leathery. I have used dull brownish greys as that is what he is in the story and that is why he wants to be colourful.

I feel like this image really explains the beginning of the story where the bat is feeling left out and ugly and like 'why do i have to be grey when all of the other birds get to be pretty colours. I want to look like them' He is holding his wings showing the dullness and he looks sad.

And this image really shows his temper. One minute you can be feeling sorry for him and the next he's like 'fine i don't need your help' thinking he's better than everyone else and getting frustrated that some birds won't give him feathers and then angry again when Quetzalcoatl won't get the birds to give him a second feather.

Quetzalcoatl

Here is a coloured version of one of my designs. I decided to do it in colour to see how it would work as a lot of this character is about its colour. I think it works quite well but it is definitely missing something that i can't figure out yet... I think i will have to show it to people and see what they think. Maybe less of the snake body like shorter? I like how the colours run into each other though think that works well.

I also think that the normal ones eyes need to be a bit less doey and innocent, It loots quite cute like this and he is supposed to be the mentor character therefore old and wise and knowledgeable and these eyes do not say that. They say aw hey look how cute and dumb i am.

I need to work on a better angry snake face but there is still something off about this concept. It doesn't quite feel like the wings are part of him. Perhaps its the shape of them? or perhaps it need less of a drastic line between the red and blue so it feels like it blends and belongs?

Also Im wondering if i need the black like or if it would look nicer without... because i did this from a photo of the bird and i quite like it. But to animate it maybe that would make things difficult. Im also thinking the colours need to be muted a little like the bird.

Bat

With the bat I started off by drawing real bats as it is something i have never attempted before. I wasn't very impressed with this and was wondering how on earth I am going to be able to design a bat if i can't even draw them.

So I decided to look at pre existing cartoon bats and see how other people got around this. A lot of bats were too simple like just their outline or like a round head with wings popping off but i wanted more of a body so my character can act better. I liked the cuteness of a lot of them but my character is a little bit mean so it can't be too cute but also he isn't evil. I want it to be simple enough to draw over and over but i don't like the really really simple style. It needs that little bit of detail to make it feel more real and connect to it.

So i sat down and thought about all the things I like and don't like and the messages i want to put forward. I decided it needed a fairly round shape to show that he is not harmful but he is also a bit lazy. I also wanted to anthropomorphise him quite a lot as i think this works well for him acting.

After a did the initial circles i added in the outlines and refined the shape of what i think he should look like.

Then added the face, a bit sad because he is lonely. I used my favourite nose and mouth from the cartoons i had found online as i thought they worked really well. Then nice big eyes. It seems like eyebrows actually might be quite important for this character because it think he has quite a lot of emotions to portray throughout the animation.

 Then I added the wings. I thought it would look quite cute if he was holding them almost like a little girl holds her dress like 'look at me I'm cute' Like he's wanting sympathy like he is from all the birds.I actually really like this character but ____said not to stop at the first one.

Then i looked into different face shaped because something might work better. As you can see i tried a bit more realistic and cool or a bit goofy...

And here we have the square, diamond, triangle and oval shapes of face. I think the best out of these would be the square. The others just don't seem to fit. I think its because there needs to be more room at the mouth because he talks a lot. I love the oval one at the bottom but it just looks too cute for the character. 

I like how the first drawing is stood too i feel this is very like the characters personality.

Quetzalcoatl

I started off by just drawing birds, real and cartoon. To get a feel of how other people seem to be designing birds. And i find i learn why people do things by copying them to start with. Like i like the wings doing gestures like the bottom left bird on the second page.

I then researched the Quetzal bird as you have seen in the previous post. I started doing some drawings of this to get a feel of the bird and see which bits I would like to include in the design. I found the pattern of the feathers and the colours and the tail all very beautiful and would like to do my best to keep those in the design.

Next I started mixing the snake in and seeing what worked. I don't like the top left design as it reminds me of the first Jurassic park and that was a dinosaur not a bird snake. Im also not so keen on the opposite page. It seems like the wings are just stuck onto a snake and it just all looks rather odd. The bottom left looks quite nice but maybe needs to be more obvious that they're wings?

Then I looked at king cobras and i thought it would be brilliant because of the wide regal neck I thought this would be great to put feathers on as it looks quite like wings. When a cobra gets angry it flares this part on its neck and i thought wouldn't it be great if he stuck his wings out when this happened?! And then puts the wings back like a bird does when its done flying. 

I am quite liking how this is looking so far and i think i may try and draw and refine this on photoshop and get some nice colours in there. Then ask people what they think and make sure the silhouette works. I think it will definitely be very different to the bat so i think it may work together. 

Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl is the other main character in the story. He is a god and is a feathered serpent:

"The god Quetzalcoatl, is the Feathered Serpent or Precious Twin. He is the god intelligence and self-reflection, a patron of priests.
Quetzalcoatl is a primordial god of creation, a giver of life. With his opposite Tezcatlipocahe created the world. Quetzalcoatl is also called White Tezcatlipoca, to contrast him to the black Tezcatlipoca.

As the Lord of the East he is associated with the morning star, his twin brother Xolotl was the evening star (Venus). As the morning star he was known by the nameTlahuizcalpantecuhtli, "lord of the star of the dawn." An other representation of Quetzalcoatl is Ehecatl, the Wind God. His calendrical name is Ce Acatl (One Reed).

After the last world, the Fourth Sun had been destroyed, Quetzalcoatl went to Mictlan, the land of the death, and created our current world, the Fifth Sun, by using his own blood to give new life to bones. Quetzalcoatl is also the giver of maize (corn) to mankind.

In the tonalpohualli, Quetzalcoatl rules over both the second day, Ehecatl (wind), and the second trecena, 1-Ocelotl (jaguar). He is Lord of the Day for days with number 9("chicunahui" in Nahuatl)."

http://www.azteccalendar.com/god/Quetzalcoatl.html

The name Quetzalcoatl means "Feathered Serpent." It brings together the magnificent green-plumed quetzal bird, symbolizing the heavens and the wind, and the snake, symbolizing the earth and fertility. 

Read more: http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Pr-Sa/Quetzalcoatl.html#ixzz3sysS3gUM

The God. Quetzalcoatl was portrayed in two ways. As the Feathered Serpent, he was a snake with wings or covered with feathers. He could also appear in human form as a warrior wearing a tall, cone-shaped crown or cap made of ocelot skin and a pendant fashioned of jade or a conchshell. The pendant, known as the "wind jewel," symbolized one of Quetzalcoatl's other roles, that of Ehecatl, god of wind and movement. Buildings dedicated to this god were circular or cylindrical in shape to minimize their resistance to the wind.

According to some accounts, Quetzalcoatl was the son of the sun and of the earth goddess Coatlicue. He and three brother gods created the sun, the heavens, and the earth. In the Aztec creation myth, Quetzalcoatl's cosmic conflicts with the god Tezcatlipoca brought about the creation and destruction of a series of four suns and earths, leading to the fifth sun and today's earth.

At first there were no people under the fifth sun. The inhabitants of the earlier worlds had died, and their bones littered Mictlan, the underworld. Quetzalcoatl and his twin, Xolotl, journeyed to Mictlan to find the bones, arousing the fury of the Death Lord. As he fled from the underworld, Quetzalcoatl dropped the bones, and they broke into pieces. He gathered up the pieces and took them to the earth goddess Cihuacoatl (Snake Woman), who ground them into flour. Quetzalcoatl moistened the flour with his own blood, which gave it life. Then he and Xolotl shaped the mixture into human forms and taught the new creatures how to reproduce themselves.

Read more: http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Pr-Sa/Quetzalcoatl.html#ixzz3syt0KpZL

This is the fantastic Quetzalcoatl bird:

 I think the feathers are just faulous especially the tail and the colours, i would really like to incorporate these in my designs.

His hair is pretty cool too and those front green feathers might work well as hands.

Here are some existing images of Quetzalcoatl that i like:

A lot of them have gone for like a dragon kind of look and i actually really like that. I dont think it needs the feet like the second to last one though and i like the idea of using the wings as hands.

Cartoon bats

Here are some bat character designs that I am quite fond of, I think they all work well for kids and are not too scary. Some are more detailed than others. As this is being designed for an animation of some length, I think it would be a good idea to make my design not too complicated. I like how on some of these the wings are being used as hands. I intend to do this too. I can't decide whether to go as far as to actually give him hands though like one of these designs or if thats taking it too far.

Bat design

So i have found out that the bats in Mexico are called free tailed bats. For my character design to be correct I would have to create one of these. However they are really ugly and actually quite scary  And character designs need to have appeal to be engaging. And my target audience is going to be kids at around about 6-10 years old and i think they would be freaked out by this:

Fruit bats are a lot less scary and may possibly be better to use for kids but this wouldn't be native? so i was thinking of doing a mix of the two. 

 The eyes are much more engaging and less threatening and they look less mangy and dangerous. I think i could use the aesthetics of the fruit bat with the anatomy of the free tailed bat. So that would include a wing span of about 30-35cm a long tail and slightly bigger ears.

GOOD NEWS

Good news, the journey man did respond but it went into my junk mail so i didn't know!! he said yes to using the story but said there is also someone who has already done it before. It is on this website:
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/stories/legend-of-the-bat-1-the-video
I understand that she used aztec kind of style drawings as its a mexican story but i actually think the characters could have been designed better so i think i would still like to try. I also think the animation could be more fluid so i could attempt that. I would also like to see more use of backgrounds.

Plan B

Unfortunately the man i asked to use his story about the bat didn't respond so i have had to resort to plan B. This is to find a folk tale such as "how the leopard got his spots" and then animate that for children.
Now the first already animated version i see is this. It is very old fashioned, long winded and a little racist with poor almost animation.

This is more the tone of voice and pace i am looking at

As discussed in my tutorial, doing a story from a difference place in the world would make me have to do a lot of research which would inform my designs more. Like Tinga tales which is very african based.

I really like this i love how the culture is all in there and i would like to do that too. However i don't think i would like mine to be quite as long as that. There are lots and lots of tinga tinga tales and i don't want to copy them but i do really like how they are done. 

These all come from the Just so stories by Rudyard Kipling.

I found this website that has all of the stories on 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2781/2781-h/2781-h.htm#link2H_4_0002

Tutorial #3

Mike suggested i read Good girls and wicked witches and Handsome heroes and vile villains (update: again these weren't particularly helpful)

Think about writing a whole chapter on archetypes, think about anthropomorphism, look at blogs in your face princess.

plan b for practical could be looking at myths and folktales from different cultures. What media will i be doing this in?

Tutorial #2

In this tutorial we spoke of cultural understanding and how it could be important to my designs. 
I need to research into character archetypes and break my work down into the chapters i want to write. Mike said everything seems okay so far.
In the practical element he said i need to identify what world my characters live in. Also think of a plan B incase i can't get hold of the man who told the story.
Start researching bats and audience.
Read 99 ways to tell a story by matt madden  and skilful huntsman. (update: this book was okay but not very helpful at all)
Look at other folk tales and how they are told.

COP3 planning

I have decided that my essay will be about how the use of colour theory and other theories such as the use of shapes and different techniques are important to character design especially in designing archetypes. 
This will hopefully include a chapter on a case study where i can show professional uses of these things, and a chapter on my practical which will include a lot of character development using lots of different theories trying to make my character the best it can be and show that it is better after all these processes. Then i intend to design one or two characters for my extended practice module that will go from the research and story stage through all the development and end up with a style sheet and turnarounds and a hopefully an animation test.
So far I have written up my notes (which has come to 6559 words) plus 500 words that could be used in the essay.
I have created a plan of when I need to have things done by and i will try and stick to it as best i can.

COP 3 tutorial 1

From this tutorial we found out that:
I need to find a question but it could be something along the lines of representation of characters, archetypes etc.
Some things to research are:
-Archetypes
-Gender
-Representation
-Anthropomorphism
-Appealing
-Environment
-Monomyth-heros journey
-Tropes+character design

Mike said that actually creating a world for your character to live in as actually almost as important as the character itself as it defines boundaries for the character like a world with high gravity would have characters that have adapted to live there. He wants me to create some characters within a world for the next tutorial which is:Wednesay 28th october

COP3

-Chapter about practice can be first person

-Write up tutorials on blog

-Academic poster, bits of practice research and essay

-Bring new proposal form on 14th october

-Write 500 words on something you've learnt about

-28th october- have a solid idea of what your doing

-Write 1 chapter in rough by the end of the month

-Send 3 days before tutorial for feedback

-Presentation on practical 12th november

-Half done by mid november

-9th december- full draft uploaded to turnit in

-10th december- progress crit

-11th december poster exhibition+practical work

-6th January- tutorial feedback on whole thing

-7th Jan- present to peers and tidy it up

-14th Jan 1pm- Hand in

COP3

-Help with research dissertation books in the library
-How learning about tricks for character design helps give life? - possible essay topic?
-Planning the project
-Write down all questions you want to investigate
-Consider each in their own merit and focus on two (primary and secondary)
-A4 first thought sheet
-what is the purpose of the study? is your question researchable?
-working title
-Ideally provide a thesis question that is concluded at the end
-Make note of key things you want to raise as you go along
-No more than 15-20 words (title)
-Choose appropriate tone
-Consider timings- make a project plan
-Deadline is in 15 weeks
-Consider holidays and life
-Allow time for collation/presenting/binding
-Turn it in draft before 11th December
-Find out which people are most talked about in the subject
-Triangulation
-Use Jstor
-Google scholar
-Start bibliography now
-Name, date, title in italics,place, publishing
-Seperate into chapters
-Formal intro
-conclusion-answer title
-Different angles in chapters
-Module overview- shows tutorials and other useful stuff
-Qualitative+ Quantitative 
-Questions on research methods on power point

Practice characters

I have just read Creating characters with personality by Tom Bancroft. It was a brilliant book because it gave you tasks to do which help you to learn through doing. It was such a good idea. Here are the characters i designed using this book. I decided to do the cowboy and the cowgirl. They are not perfect and I would love to go and revise them both at some point in the future. They are definitely better than when I started this project though.

Drawings from research

While reading How to draw the marvel way by John Buscema and Stan Lee I learned soooooo much! This was one of the best books I read for helping me learn to draw better.
My faces became more realistic as I learned the proper proportions and the triangle technique which is how you place features on the face. I thought that was so clever and it really did make my drawings better!
This is really good reference for figuring out face angles which is something that I struggle with so I saved it as a note and also practiced to see if i could even copy images like this and still have them look right.
 I also learnt about action poses and how to use shapes to build them up. I am still learning about this but I think I am better than I was.

I used all the techniques I had just learnt in this book to create a picture of Catwoman. I used the shapes to build up her body and then the triangles to do the face. I was so impressed with myself! These tips really do help!!