Unit 1/4: Final Piece

Evaluation:

This project has resulted in the creation of Trixie, although I feel that I had issues figuring out who I wanted her to be I feel like I’m now totally happy with her character. She’s a character I’d like to carry into future projects if possible as I’m proud of her design and personality in general. Trixie is a childish, naive character. I use the pink in her design to represent this, and I use the black to represent the neurotic and chaotic side of her personality.

For my final piece for this unit I placed my character into a lab environment-this relates to how she’s-although unqualified-a “scientist”- As the background was quite complex I decided to do the colouring in a simple way, I used two colours, the light pink and the brownish-grey, this is meant to be representative of her character as a whole since the theme of two contrasting colours/themes is prevalent in her design. I do feel as though it makes it look rushed though and if I was to do this again I’d do the colouring as I normally would or make the background less complex.

The positive side to colouring the background the way I did is that it means there is a clear focus on the character, and as she’s what I put most time into that’s what I’d want people to look at first and focus their attention on.

While creating this piece I learnt a lot about angles and using the line tool as that’s what the background is mostly made up of. I feel like I got most of the angles accurate however I think I could’ve done better with the floor tiles.

I didn’t expect to come across scaling issues however one issue I came to was figuring out how to scale my character to fit into the space she was in-I tried to use the desk as a reference point as to how big she was in comparison to everything else in the room. I think this problem could’ve been solved by me doing the whole illustration on one document rather than drawing my character on a separate document then inserting her onto the background.

Overall I’m mostly happy with what I produced, anything I’m unhappy with such as the blank posters on the walls and dull colouring could have been solved by me managing my time better or working more efficiently. I need to work on drawing and colouring faster with my tablet.

Unit 1/4: Characters and Backgrounds on Photoshop

CHARACTERS:

I opened Photoshop and experimented with a lot of brushes and drew doodles of my character with them-some regular painting/drawing brushes and then some more abstract ones. I got some interesting effects with this, my favourite is in the lower left corner

Here I took one of the doodles of my character and used the photographs i’d taken earlier to colour her. To accomplish this I used layers and the lasso tool. I enjoyed the effect I managed to create because of her two toned hair.

BACKGROUNDS:

I started using shape tools (the rectangle tool and line tool) to create a graveyard type background. I enjoyed the challenge of not really being able to create curves and so going for a more pixel art kind of effect:

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Here I started working on using the line tool to create a background around my character. I did some details with the regular paintbrush tool

Unit 1/4: Photography

I went out and took around 40 photographs for use in my collage work, for reference, and for texture references.

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I enjoyed looking at things in a different way and found a lot more to photograph than I thought I would. I think I can put some of these to use for references e.g tile textures for a lab setting.

Unit 1/4: Developing a Character-Wicked Scientist

RESEARCH:

I started out with primary research and worked on a spider diagram and noted down what came to mind when I thought about a “wicked scientist”. I then asked a peer (Dom) what came to mind when they heard the term “wicked scientist”- I noted down their ideas too. This helped me figure out if I was on the right lines with my thoughts and allowed me to compare my thoughts with another person.

Another method of research I used was putting together a Pinterest board full of images that inspired me to make this character. This gave me a better idea of my characters personality type, their appearance, the kind of environments they’d appear in, and overall just helped me figure out who my character was as a whole. I was mostly inspired by the colour pink for its seemingly innocent and childish appearance.

Alongside the Pinterest board I noticed that certain songs inspired me to work more on the character, these were usually songs that fitted my characters personality. I gathered a playlist of these songs below and listened to them whenever I was developing my character. For me this was one of the most effective things I did, when listening to these songs I can visualize my character extremely clearly.

Another source of inspiration for me was other characters, shows, and videogames. I was particularly inspired by Dib from Invader Zim, Herbert West from Re-Animator, and Neo-Cortex from Crash Bandicoot.

dib/invader zim

PROBLEM SOLVING/ALTERATIONS:

My main issue with my character was being hyperfixated on stereotypes and focusing on creating a protagonist. It wasn’t until very late in the development process that I made two big changes in the character- changing her gender and making her the antagonist rather than the protagonist. I figured I wanted her character to be similar to Neo Cortex from the Crash Bandicoot series, wicked and evil yet likable and comedic.

I also thought that the male design of my character was too generic. He wasn’t particularly unique and wacky the way I wanted him to be- I realized that I could do more with a female character and gave her wild pigtails and heavy eye makeup. These details made her more recognizable and gave her a more distinct character design and silhouette.

FINAL CHARACTER:

Trixie is a 19 year old science prodigy, she comes from a wealthy family and was tutored at home living an extremely sheltered childhood. As a result of her limited contact with the outside world she lacks street skills, she’s naive, childish, and does not understand that her actions have consequences. Her childish nature made me think of the idea of her using modified toys as weapons.

From a young age she had been modifying and altering her toys in order to make functional weapons. A few of her signature weapons include her modified water-pistol, a candy chainsaw, and her wind-up teeth grenades.

She’s 5 feet tall, I made her short to put emphasis on the idea of her being a temperamental brat. She has intense eye makeup and half and half pink and black hair-I feel like these details make her more distinct as well as establish that she’s a rebellious, intimidating character.

Trixie wears an oversized labcoat-this makes her feel more “grown up”. The fact it’s oversized is in reference to how she wants to feel like she fulfills the role of a qualified scientist. She’s a child in an adults world and wants to be seen as professional- in contrast to this she wears a bright pink pleated skirt, and knee high socks (with one half rolled down) this is more in line with her actual age and again emphasizes that her desire to feel included in the adult world is merely a craving rather than something that she can actually fulfill.

I used a lot of colour theory in designing Trixie-the pink is lighthearted and childish in contrast to the black which has connotations of evil and menace. These two colours both suit her character perfectly but portray completely different things and aspects to her personality.