Characters update

I haven't posted in a while and i got quite a bit of work to put up. First off both of my characters have been through some changes leading up to final designs, i haven't posted anything on my female character in a while so i'll do that first.

From my thumbnails i developed these two, the one on the left is the head i liked from the thumbnail page but developed into a full body character, she has the whole distressed and deranged mental patient thing going on. I also gave her a burn scar on her arm, i liked the idea of her being a bit messed up due to a childhood trauma. The other design is more psychotic criminal looking, in handcuffs, tattoos and markings on her body.

From there i went onto this character who was kind of a mix of traumatized mentally ill killer, thought he character was a little bland, i felt if i was going to go with this kind of graphic novel style deranged mental case girl i may as well go full on.

so since i found the last design to be quite lack luster i went back to the basics with it her and looked at the silhouette, trying to make it stand out more and be more unique than she originally was. From these i liked numbers 3 and 5 the most, the kind of medicated look of them both, i also like the kind of reckless look of number 5.

Here is the design i developed. I like the kind of disregard for her appearance  like she is out on the wings and doesn't realize her fashion faux pas. I've started modeling her but I've been wondering weather or not i should change the see through shirt  to give her a more distinctive shape, i think i will change the hair when it comes to modeling the head.

Character 2 design

So here is what i arrived on for my stylized character with a mental illness. He is basically some crazy homeless guy, if that wasn't obvious already, i quite like the shapes but he needs some refining, i drew him with his coat open because i initially though of having some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder where he collects things, when it came to it i just though what would be the weirdest thing to see inside someones coat.   So i put in a weird little person hiding in his pocket, i though it might look like some little imaginary friend but frankly it looks more creepy than anything else. Though you can't really tell here he is supposed to have a tin foil hat, an aspect i liked from the Futurama episode where they are all in wearing different tin foil hats. I'm fairly happy with him though, i will get some feedback and do some development sketches.

Stylized character moodboard

Here is a mood board of some of my favourite stylized characters. I looked at some games like borderlands, Team fortress 2 and Super Monday Night Combat. I tired to look outside of games too, i looked at some Pixar artwork from the movie UP, Pixar are some of the best character designers around and always have recognizable characters built from shapes.

I looked at one of my favourite artists as well, Mike Henry, he does extremely good stylized and cartoonish character art. His deviant art profile is here http://zatransis.deviantart.com/.

I also looked at an animated short i saw last year called Backwater Gospel.

Character sketches 2

These are the male sketches i talked about, i'm still drawn to the more detailed and realistic drawings simply because i'm better at them. I know that the lower poly model won't be able to show this much detail and that causes a problem with my idea of having the characters linked, they will in the end look fundamentally different due to the poly count restriction. Because of this I've tried to do some more stylized sketches as well, they haven't worked out so well and think i need to research some more stylized characters to see how they do them so effectively.

Mood Board

I thought i had already put this up but anyway here it is. 

I got a bunch of images together of some of my favourite characters with mental health problems from different media.

On here is some of the more obvious ones, The joker who i already covered, both Arkham city and Health Ledger joker. Some concept art of Harley Quinn. Two face from The Dark Knight. Donnie Darko. Kai from Heavenly Sword. The guys from Fight Club, though only one actually has mental health problems, the whole imaginary friend thing might be a good way to go with these characters. Guy Pearce from Memento. Some characters from Shutter Island, one more important that the other but i remember that old lady being creepy as hell in the movie. I also put in keanu Reeves from A Scanner Darkly in there too, although his condition is drug induced i still find him interesting and the portrayal of his mind degrading in the movie will be healthful inspiration in the future assignments.

Character idea thumbnails 1

So i think i'm going to do one character that is suffering from some kind of psychosis (undefined as of yet), and i will have another who is trying to catch and bring the person back to their room (institute). However they perceive this person as some kind of evil monster or just deranged person trying to catch and kill them. These are just my first thumbnails and they are all women, i will do male ones for the same character idea and then the same for the other character. 

Character ideas

I have begun brainstorming some character ideas, I've done two mind maps for each character shown below. They are currently quite basic and just go over some vague ideas of what i could do for these characters.

This is the mind map for the character that will suffer from some form of mental illness. I have listed a few mental conditions that the character could suffer from, i have not included dementia as i would like to do something new and not dwell on the same condition for each assignment. Split personality disorder is always an interesting one but can be overused. post traumatic stress disorder is an unusual one to cover, there aren't many well developed characters that suffer from it, it is also a hard condition to display visually. Obsessive compulsive disorder may be a good one to do, you can do a lot of little details that show this. Cannibalistic psychosis is from a small assignment i did back in the first few weeks of my first year. I had come up with a short narrative that featured two characters, ideally a protagonist and an antagonist. My idea was about this couple, the husband developed a psychosis where he took the saying "you are what you eat" literally and thus became a cannibal where he ate who he wanted to become. The protagonist was his wife who was the first person he ate, she had a new prosthetic arm given to her by some governmental organisation in a kind of bionic woman style scenario. Alcoholism would probably be one of the easiest one to do, though is may be a physical dependence on a substance, the actual addiction is still a mental disorder, the same way things like bulimia are.

Here are some ideas for what the other character could be, i listed 4 main kinds of roles that this kind of character would fit into. I included family member because of the dynamic i used in the previous project where it was a father and his daughter trying to help him, also there are many cases where people look after their loved ones instead of admitting them to a care facility. Probably the most obvious one was the doctor/nurse/medical professional, this one probably wouldn't be that interesting but on the orderly one i thought about flipping the roles, sort of how it was in the movie Sucker Punch.

Oscar Issac as Blue Jones in Sucker Punch.

Bharadwaj, S. (2011). Sucker Punch-Movie Review. Retrieved from http://samirbharadwaj.com/blog/sucker-punch-movie-review/

I find that corrupt, evil or otherwise not normal doctors always make more interesting characters.
The last one is the pacifier, i looked at the relationship between batman and the joker as a prime example of this, Joker is indeed all kinds of crazy and Batman in a way must pacify him and return him to his cell in Arkham Asylum. My idea from my first year had this same dynamic.


I also thought that why should i have to create 2 characters that look the way they're supposed to, in my last project the world was viewed as it was. This gave me the idea to have the character suffering from the illness as the main character, thus already flipping the dynamic i used in the last project and have as if this person perceives everything different due to the illness. An example would be that this person sees the orderly or doctor or whoever who is trying to help them or get them back into their room as some kind of monster trying to chase and capture them.

Character Design research

These are a set of videos from professional concept artist Feng Zhu, he has a youtube channel and puts up tutorial walkthroughs and videos showing various techniques in how to create art in a professional manner. This was one of the first of his videos that watched when i first found them, he shows the method of using silhouettes to quickly create character concepts. I have previously tried this method and haven't been able to replicate it.

Assignment 2 character research

The Joker

Image of the Joker from Batman Arkham City.

Melrose, K. (2011). After 20 Years, Mark Hamill Bids 

a Fond Farewell to The Joker. Retrieved from http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2011/10/19/after-20-years-mark-hamill-bids-a-fond-farewell-to-the-joker/

The Joker is one of the most iconic characters suffering from clear mental illnesses, though not mind altering in the same way dementia is, his insanity is just as damaging. Since i will need to make two characters i'd like to try and come up with some kind of dynamic between them. I said in my brief i was going to create characters that either suffered from or treated mental illness, my intention in the last project was to explore the painful loss of a family member to a disease like dementia  i feel as though i should go for something a little less serious this time, it may help my current mood shift to the melancholy. Though it tends to come a go, i'm just like that. The Joker however is the perfect example, he's a different kind of crazy and has multiple dynamics, he has himself against the doctors of Arkham asylum, his twisted relationship with his previous doctor and now girl friend Harley Quinn who has her own host of mental issues.

Harley Quinn concept.

Whitworth, J. (2010). Harley Quinn Concept Art. Retrieved from http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=37604

Finally there is the obvious relationship between the Joker and Batman, though unconventional batman basically serves as a pacifying orderly.

Assignment 2

Assignment 2 is a professional character conception, in my project plan i stated that i would be creating 2 characters that either suffered from or treated mental illness. In preparation for this i have researched other characters that have some kind of mental condition.

Groenendijk, F. (2007). Heavenly Sword PS3 review of a blockbuster action movie turned video game. Retrieved from http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/11/26/heavenly-sword-ps3-review-of-a-blockbuster-action-movie-turned-video-game.htm

superfantagigacruelico. (n.d.). tumbler. Retrieved from http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/heavenly-sword?before=1343979787

This is Kai from Heavenly Sword, Kai is an unstable personality. She is a young girl but acts much more child like than she actually is. It is revealed later in the game that she was traumatized as a child. She also exhibits signs of some kind of autistic disorder. The artwork reflects her occasional fearful personality and the clothing style and cat like ears reflect her playfulness.

These kinds of character design aspects really help show a characters personality, this generally works better through 2d design o i'm not sure how to get similar things across through 3d modeling. I would figure that would come into play with VO and animation.

Hand in

My concept doc is now "finished", which it's not really it's just been handed in. The actual document needs work, i didn't get to do as much work as i should have over last weekend due to being ill. I'll put it up but it's not impressive and i'm not happy with it. Needs a lot more imagery, i didn't manage to work on the environments  they'd suck anyway but it needs them. i also worked on my GUI artwork but didn't get them finished in time to put them in the document. I also made a page numbering mistake.