A Visual Essay
Character Study.
In my second year of University, I began a visual essay on character design with the aim to improve my skills. It showed me new ways of creating characters designed for a child audience, and helped me explore what makes children’s human characters so popular. I used a variety of research, including a week of on-site drawing in a variety of rural and urban locations.
I began this project intending to improve my character generating skills; using human designs rather than my normal instinct to create animal characters with no identifiable gender or race for young audience books. The start of my process involved researching artists such as Steve Wilkin whose drawings are really effective even though they are normally unfinished. He harmonizes with my own findings of on-site drawing; that it is incredibly difficult to draw all the detail of the strangers that I am observing. Marina Grechanik is another artist I looked at whose illustrations reflect my findings of my own sketchbook through the need to work quickly which in turn creates really interesting shapes and a free, loose style.
After my weeklong trip visiting London, Bristol, the Somerset Mendips and Falmouth, I filled a sketchbook full of observations of strangers. Looking back through the drawings I created, I felt like I could not use them and decided to try a different technique of character generation. I looked into various generation techniques such as exaggeration by using collage to put together different features and body parts from magazine clippings, which created some very interesting characters. My experimentations were really interesting and I drew from them. Next, I decided to look at exaggerated body types using the typical female and male shapes and stretching them out. I used this idea of exaggeration and applied it to the character I drew in my on-site sketchbook and I used digital manipulation to re draw the images. I really liked the simplification of the features and the minimal line, and the end products reminded me of the work of my favourite illustrator: Quentin Blake. I looked at how his style and technique is so expressive and quirky, and how I should apply his freedom of mark making to my own work.
I then decided to use my flat mates “Outfit of the day” photographs and use Blake’s technique of quick, bold marks to recreate the outfits. However, half way through the experiment, I decided to stop and evaluate my progress so far. I found that the most successful character generation so far, was the reworking of the sketchbook drawings using exaggeration. I asked myself “What Do I Want in a Character?” And the answer is; Something new and quirky that children will love. After looking at Studio AKA and Joint London’s designs for the TSB adverts as well as the work of Luigi Lucarelli, I admired the soft, calm style and the exaggerated body shapes and facial features that these designers have portrayed.
In the next part of my visual essay, I decided to use myself as a starting point to begin exaggerating features and body parts, and simplifying features to make them more relatable to children. After looking at facial expression and stretching of the body shape, I was happy with the outcome and carried on experimenting with other designs. I accidentally created an effective ink and watercolour style that brought the characters to life with bold colour and line with mark making bringing out some detail. After manipulating myself and my flat mates as these new characters, I decided to return to my sketchbook and photographs and pick out my favourite urban and rural characters to re create in this style. One character that caught my eye was the bass player of a band playing in London, so I began with him, editing his body shape and features. Once I was happy, I carried on experimenting with more of my personal favourites.
After I had a good amount of experiments, I asked my peers to vote on their favourite character from the urban category and the rural category. It was clear on which ones were more successful as they had an extensive amount more votes than the others. The most popular characters were ones that I completely agreed with; the bass player, the suited man, the hipster and the dog walker. I then used the watercolour and ink combination to produce the final pieces. However, after viewing them I decided they were missing something. In a Visual Studies lesson, I experimented with texture, creating many variations and putting them together digitally. I decided to use this media and apply it to my characters.
I was happy that the Dog walker is obviously rural, and the Suited man is urban, but the Bass player and the Hipster could be either, leaving the viewer to think for themselves, or it would be evident in the accompanying text. I feel that my character generation and style was improved by this project, and I have been using human characters and experimenting digitally ever since.
