My Digital Media Project - All Briefs - More In-Depth Explanations and Thoughts Thus Far

Brief 1 - Brief 1 was a mascot for a professional event, like Pictoplasma. An event where professionals in the sector would meet with each other, give talks, etcetera. This character, whom I nicknamed Robo, was intended to be a pleasant, happy character, yet one who had a slight melancholy about him. I wanted him to look like he had a life behind him, plausibly quite a long one. The final products I want for the Realisation handin are a character sheet, a reusable vector image of Robo, and a banner made using said vector image. Through working on him, I gained some extra practice in using Illustrator and Photoshop, though I am already familiar with these.

Brief 2 - Brief 2 is the main character from a lesser known fairytale. I, personally, prefer to call the fairytale Donkeyskin, but it has several names. This character has a rather traumatic backstory in the fairytale. This character's final products are to be her character sheet, three designs for the three gowns in the story, and a completed illustration of a point in the story. I rearranged the order of the briefs almost specifically because I wanted to do this one within the development deadline. This is the one I really want to do well, because it is the one most heavily placed in my area of interest, and using techniques that I enjoy.

Brief 3 - Brief 3 is a comic book protagonist, based on the archetype of a Paladin. A Paladin is a common class in Roleplaying Games, especially those set in High Fantasy worlds. However, one iteration of the paladin archetype I have not seen is one in an Urban Fantasy setting, a person in a modern world who has the abilities associated with Paladins. This was the concept I wanted to play with. This character would follow a fairly formulaic Urban Fantasy plot, where an Everyman character would gain unexpected supernatural abilities. Usually, though, these abilities would be based around a different archetype, say a witch or a medium, I've never seen it done with a Paladin. The final product of this brief is to be a character sheet and a page of her story, made using Manga Studio, with the help of a tutorial site I found.

Brief 4 - Brief 4 is a merchant character for a video game aimed at children. Merchant and Smith characters in video games, in particular RPGs, tend not to look very different from each other. Sometimes, I'd swear the smith characters were all the same man. Because of this, I think it'd be interesting to find something different to try, another angle for the character. However, this character's final prototype would be their character sheet, and an at least basic 3D model of them. While I have used some of the software before, I am not extremely confident in it, and I understand that there are differences between what I've learned about the software and how it is supposed to be used in creating assets for video games. This is why I have gotten in contact with another student, James, who works in the video game industry. I've asked him for help, when I roll around to this brief.

Brief 5 - Brief 5 is a mascot for a family friendly chain of Italian restaurants. The final products would be a character sheet and a short animation using Flash or After Effects. Originally, this was the first brief, but after some thought, mainly on the fact that I don't actually have easy access to the software required to do it, I decided to make it the last instead. Due to this sequence of events, I have done a good deal of thinking and made some very basic sketches. Originally, I was going to use an Italian cook as a base for the mascot, but I felt that was too obvious, too cliche. Instead, I decided to use an Italian grandmother, because I felt that would be a more interesting choice. There are several Grandmother tropes that I felt would be more fun to play with, such as grandmothers who have surprising backstories, tales of adventure and romance that clash with the wholesome image connected to old women.

My Digital Media Project - Brief 2 - Initial Sketches

These are initial sketches. At first, I thought I'd try to design the coat, the iconic appearance of the princess in Donkeyskin, and also decide whether the coat would literally involve a donkey's skin as the head. However, when I had trouble visualising the coat, it struck me that I could try the design process a different way.

I own a number of old How-To-Draw books, and one which is particularly well-loved is "How To Draw Magical Girls" by Chris Hart. "Magical Girls" is a genre of Manga and Anime, which features a young (usually 10 - 18) girl who gains magical abilities, which usually include a transformation into a glamorous Magical Girl form. In this book, the author advises the reader to design the magical girl first, and design her ordinary appearance afterwards. This helps the artist establish the character, and means that they are less likely to go too far with the magical design, to the point where it looks ridiculous.

Because of this, I decided to do some preliminary sketches of the three dresses from Donkeyskin. These were mostly just me deciding on a theme for the three of them, what kind of fashion I wanted this fantasy kingdom to have. I tried out several ideas, icluding:

 a dress inspired by the fashion of the Regency era in England, such as the setting of the work of Jane Austen.

 

Stereotypical, vague "fairytale" dresses, not particularly based on an era. I, in the comments written on the page, made a jab at the fact that I felt one looked an awful lot like the dress worn by Odette, the main character in "The Swan Princess".

And, finally, a dress based on the stereotypical "Southern Belle", similar to the women in "Gone With the Wind".

I like the Regency dress best, and I feel it works with it's theme the best out of them, so I will be doing more sketches of the various dresses featured in Donkeyskin using the Regency style. Even so, I very much like the Southern Belle dress, and may be considering filing it away for use elsewhere in the future.

My Digital Media Project - Brief 2 - Robyn Gets Overexcited For Drawing Donkeyskin

The second brief in Scheherazade: Living On a Tale is based around the idea of a book of lesser known fairytales, specifically, the main character of Donkeyskin. The final products for this brief will be designs for each of the dresses featured in the story, and at least one completed illustration.

This is a fairytale near and dear to my heart, but it's one I didn't come across as a child. I found it when I was a teenager, looking up old cartoons. Specifically, in this case, Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, and the episode entitled The Coat of Many Colours.

For this brief, I plan to take inspiration from older illustrations, due to a trend I noticed when I was looking through bookstores. Generally, books of fairytales made for children tend to polarise into two camps, in regards to their illustrations. One with simple, childlike illustrations, and one with more grim, Tim Burton-esque illustrations. In recent times, there doesn't seem to be as much focus on the beautiful illustrations seen in fairytale collections from decades past. This is something that has saddened me, since I fondly remember the first fairytale book my mother gave me, a ratty old thing, but it had gorgeous illustrations. I commiserated with a group of friends in secondary school about the lack of good illustrated fairytale books, so I know that I'm not the only person who'd be interested in such a thing.

In light of this, I'm going to look into creating more realistic, traditional looking illustrations, but through using digital methods to mimic traditional aesthetics. A few artists I'll be looking at for inspiration are Arthur Rackham, Beatrix Potter and a little Glen Keane for flavour.

[Arthur Rackham]

[Beatrix Potter]

[Glen Keane]