To start off, I apologise for the lateness of this blogpost. Last week was the start of the Dichotomy Character project! Well.. technically it was set on the thursday before, however most of us were still working on the Sentry gun project right up until its hand in on the monday. I was so happy last monday! Before starting on the character project I carried on trying to get the arm rotating as it shot but had no luck, so I asked for help from Elliott in the third year and because of him it works brilliantly. As he went along he talked it through to help me understand; it was so helpful and I really appreciate him taking the time to help me! I would like to practice more with blueprints in UE4 to be able to become comfortable with it, though. I'm hoping that I'll be able to come back to my sentry gun at some point, so I can perhaps add sounds and sort out a particle effect.
Anyway, on to the character project! This project is incredibly flexible. We have to create two characters who are complete opposites but would belong to the same world. We don't have any tri limit or texture budget, simply an instruction to be reasonable. This kind of freedom was both exciting and daunting, especially as I didn't have the foggiest idea what I wanted to do.
So I started by doing some quick idea mapping, thinking of generalised character types and focusing on the relationship between the two. At first, my favourite idea was a kind of badass gran with her weedy grandson. I very quickly lost interest in that idea, though and because I was still stuck I decided to make a mood board focusing on my favourites of the ideas.
I went on Pinterest and made a large mood board compiling all of the resources I thought would be helpful to me. I put them into grouped sections, so I'd be able to quickly look over at a group for a specific thing. I first looked at existing dichotomy characters and found some brilliant images, one of which was a photo of a small elderly lady sitting on a bench next to a tall punk rocker. I was so glad I found that, because it was a real life example of dichotomy and it made me smile. I also looked at various stylised characters, examples of small girl characters, teen boy characters, monsters, cyborgs and explorers. My two favourite duo types at this point were a girl and her large cute monster and siblings, so these were what I kept my eye out for the most. I very quickly lost interest in the cyborg stuff and took a great interest in the explorer images I had found.
I thought of a story from here, which I thought could take the form of a brother and sister who have gone hiking with their parents but have got lost from them. I wanted them to be very contrasting in personality and visuals. I liked the idea of the boy being a hormonal teen, so typically a bit of a moody git. However, he's a moody git who, despite appearances, secretly cares very strongly for his little sister; who is sweet, cute, intelligent and ever so slightly irritating. The way I imagine all siblings are. He was to be tall and gangly with sharper edges, whilst she was to be short and made of rounder shapes.
I made another mood board focusing solely on brother/sister sibling relations and how I would show my characters relationship with one another.
I made a bash kit of three simple shapes; a square, circle and a triangle. From here I came up with some ideas for the head shapes of the characters. I pretty much only used circles and triangles for the little girl, however for the boy I used circles very little.
Using my favourites from the bash kit, I drew the rest of both characters to make a comparison between them both height-wise. Here I focused even further on the shapes of the characters, always trying to make sure that the characters consistently contrasted one another in a complimentary manner.
I really liked the boy's face, so I sketched it out with different hair styles and variations on features. I really liked the face how it was, however I loved the hair style for the second one. I had been sketching this out previous to this page and I really liked how it made the character appear more edgy, with a stronger attitude.
I wanted to make sure that the silhouettes were interesting as well, so I made sure of this whilst looking into details of what my characters would be wearing. My favourites for the boy were iterations 1 and 5, whilst for the girl I liked 1 and 2 best.
I still couldn't decide between the two outfits, so I did two height comparisons to compare and see which I liked best. In the end I decided on leather jacket, because it backed up his edgy look and typical teenage attitude more effectively.
When I presented these ideas, the main points of criticism I received was the silhouettes and values for the little girl. The issue was that her hair was a similar colour to her poncho, so it blended in a little bit too much. It was suggested to me that I make her blonde, which would sort out the value issue and make her contrast favourably with her brother. So, following this feedback, I made value sheets for both characters, focusing more in making sure that different elements contrasted well.
I tried the chosen value for the girl with both dark hair and light hair, both of which seemed to work. I still wasn't sure, because although the blonde girl contrasted with her brother well, giving the girl dark hair made them look related. I also looked more into the details of the characters to include when it comes to texturing. I made decisions about their personalities too, for instance, the brother is bigger and stronger, so carries the heavier pack, whilst the younger sister carries a small backpack, a teddy and perhaps a torch. I liked the idea of including a small token of the affection between them and thought that the girl could maybe make little homemade flower badges, one of which she gives to her older brother. He would obviously not display this normally, but his sister made it.
From here I created some colour sheets for both characters. I kept to mostly dull colours for the brother, knowing that bright colours wouldn't really suit the personality or look that I am going for with this character. However for the little girl I tried more varied colour combinations as I wanted her to be the brighter, happier one out of the two.
I was anxious to start modelling them after this, so I very quickly made orthographical model sheets for both characters for me to use as reference whilst making my characters.
I'm quite pleased with the overall look of the pair of characters so far. I have also majority built a physical model out of wire and Sculpey of the teenager, and am currently in the process of modelling him in 3ds Max. However, this has been a pretty long blogpost, so I'll update you with that in the next one!
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