Illustration & Visual Narrative | Task 01: Character Design

-Week 1 - Week 3

-Takeguchi Shunta/0386416/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media

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DOCUMENTATION

In this task, we needed to create three characters. I started by exploring who, where, trait, and twist of characters. My idea of three characters was

1. alien, mountain, funny, has a dog

2. robot, company, crazy, wears a suit

3. shark, Australia, chill, tall

And to make the ideas clear, I searched moodboard on Pinterest. 

1. Alien

Alien moodboard

2. Robot

Robot moodboard

3. Shark

Shark moodboard

I also create a background story for each character.

1. Alien

I created this alien dog lover. He came from another galaxy, and met this 'will be his soulmate dog' in the pet shop. He now owns his house on earth and shares his life with the dog. They both love going for a long walk to the mountain. 

2. Robot

I imagine this robot is a prototype of an office working robot, helping colleagues and working like a real human employee. I made him wear a suit to make him look like a professional office worker. However, he is a prototype, and the company does not have the financial ability to modify him; he sometimes goes crashing. Since he has had many crashes, his words and actions can be crazy at times. But overall, he loves his job, and colleagues love him too. He is called Pat by colleagues.

3. Shark  

I design him as an enormous shark in Australia. He lives on the east coast of Australia and shows himself up in different surf spots every day. He really likes watching people surfing, sometimes he takes the surfboard from them and plays with it. 

I moved on to sketching, referring to the moodboard. 

1. Alien

Alien sketch 1

Alien sketch 2

Alien sketch 3

2. Robot

Robot sketch 1

Robot sketch 2

Robot sketch 3

3. Shark

Shark sketch 1

Shark sketch 2

Shark sketch 3

Next is the digitalization part in Illustrator, but before that, I needed to choose one sketch from each character. For the alien, I chose sketch 3 since the alien is more unique than the other sketches. For the robot, I chose sketch 1 because I thought the robot expresses the trait 'crazy' with the face. Lastly, shark, I chose sketch 3, so that I thought I could express the dynamicness. 

Alien lineart

Robot lineart

Shark lineart

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FINAL OUTPUT

Alien final output

Robot final output

Shark final output

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TECHNIQUES APPLIED

I put effort into the shadow and highlight process. I did not have much experience in drawing, so I first searched for where and how to draw shadows and highlights. I learned that it's crucial to imagine where the light is coming from when adding them. For all three characters, I imagined the light was coming from the upper left, so shadows in the bottom, right side, and highlights in the upper, left side. I tried to put them in every detailed part I could. Like the shirt sleeves of the Robot, the shadow helps to see the positional relationship between the dress shirt and jacket.

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SELF REFLECTION

Since I am not so good at drawing, I found it hard to create the 9 sketches and digitalizing 3 characters. And I did not have the skills in Illustrator, so the final outputs seemed simple work with minimum lines and colors. I now think they would be better if I had added gradients or wrinkles in the skin or clothes.