The Truth Will Make Ye Fere
Sep. 17th, 2006 12:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinGather 'round, children, it's storytime.*
Once upon a time, when Tealin was a budding would-be animator, she was told to put a design through its paces; take a character through a range of expressions and poses to work out the kinks and learn what made it work. And she did that! Oh, yes. And it worked. Her sketchbook was all full of that sort of thing. She even made a website out of it!
Then Tealin went to school. It was a school for animators. And she got to do stuff like that for assignments! The assignments were all on loose paper, and she was spending so much time on them that she didn't get to do the same sort of stuff in her sketchbook, but that was OK because she was still doing it and learning a lot.
After she graduated, Tealin got a job! This was pretty cool, especially because she got to earn her living by doing just those same things, all day, every day, on really fun shows! She was spending so much time on it that she didn't get to do the same sort of stuff in her sketchbook, but that was OK because she was still doing it and learning a lot.
One day, the people who gave Tealin things to draw came to her and said, 'Tealin, we would like you to do storyboards instead of design! Doesn't that sound like fun?' It didn't sound like fun, but she did it anyway, and after a while she got used to it and it was OK. But by then she had gotten out of the habit of doing design stuff in her sketchbook, and was just using it to hash out raw designs as quickly as she read the books and wasn't taking time to develop them any further at all! Oh no!
Then the Remembering Fairy of Animation Regret** came and visited Tealin and said 'You should put a design through its paces; take a character through a range of expressions and poses to work out the kinks and learn what makes it work.' Tealin thought 'Of course! How could I have forgotten?' So she picked the main character from the most recent book she'd read and started work!
In grownup speak now: I am woefully out of practise at practical design stuff so I'm having a go at William: he's got a number of great scenes, he's fresh in my memory, but mostly I get to nurture my narcissism because I AM WILLIAM. At least ... before his arc of empowering self-discovery. I hope I never need one like that and can spend the rest of my life hiding behind a pencil but now we're getting off topic.
More than a year ago I wrested an image of William de Worde from the blankness that surrounded him in my head and came up with this:
There were some things about the original design that I wanted to keep or even amplify. I wanted his hair to be all at the top, sort of ... like an ice cream cone or sea anemone or the end piece of a sushi roll with lettuce in it, something to that effect. He needed that long arisocratic nose. And I wanted to capture a certain sort of jaw – I've known a few people with it; the chin sticks out but there isn't much of a contour on the sides. It's not a matter of pudginess, it's just a narrow jaw that isn't any wider than the neck below it, so it's kind of one slightly curved plane from the cheekbone to the neck. (The first person that comes to mind who I can use as an example is John Cleese. Apparently I based the anatomy of William's whole face on Cleese's, on a structural level anyway.) The biggest challenge, though, was the hair. In my original design it was so unstructured that it was practically impossible to reproduce or turn around, so I had to give it some sort of appealing shape as well as try to convey that it was curly. I even decided to push my luck and try to make it look like the sort of hair that thins early and might even be already starting to go, like this picture of Prince Edward. I also took a stab at the costume here, thinking that an 1820/30s style high-waisted waistcoat/jacket ensemble (example) would be in character, but I haven't experimented much with that.
Anyway, out of this page I liked the one in the bottom right corner the best (William always looks most himself when he's startled) so I worked with that:
The smiling and frowning faces are fliped right off that previous drawing; the others are noodling around. You even get to see my atrocious sketch of the 'I'm trying to work!' William, lucky you.
I slept on it (not literally) then did these the following day:
Am I getting somewhere? I am sparing your eyes further torment by eliminating the very bad On The Ledge sketch ... we've already had one of those, no more until they get better.
These were the same day:
He had to share the page with Coffee Girl, hence the narrowness of the image file...
I wanted to make his mouth the sort of mouth that looks like a hole cut in the face (moreso than a 'normal' mouth which is, in its very essence, a hole in the face) – not much extraneous structure or sculpted lips or anything, just HoleMouth. Does this look like that? At all?
It is WAY past my bedtime, so I shall just throw this up on the dartboard of LJ – Any suggestions are accepted! Maybe not implemented, but at least considered!
*Did you know it's been more than ten years since Hunchback came out? That ought to be illegal, or something.
**glingle glingle glingle
Once upon a time, when Tealin was a budding would-be animator, she was told to put a design through its paces; take a character through a range of expressions and poses to work out the kinks and learn what made it work. And she did that! Oh, yes. And it worked. Her sketchbook was all full of that sort of thing. She even made a website out of it!
Then Tealin went to school. It was a school for animators. And she got to do stuff like that for assignments! The assignments were all on loose paper, and she was spending so much time on them that she didn't get to do the same sort of stuff in her sketchbook, but that was OK because she was still doing it and learning a lot.
After she graduated, Tealin got a job! This was pretty cool, especially because she got to earn her living by doing just those same things, all day, every day, on really fun shows! She was spending so much time on it that she didn't get to do the same sort of stuff in her sketchbook, but that was OK because she was still doing it and learning a lot.
One day, the people who gave Tealin things to draw came to her and said, 'Tealin, we would like you to do storyboards instead of design! Doesn't that sound like fun?' It didn't sound like fun, but she did it anyway, and after a while she got used to it and it was OK. But by then she had gotten out of the habit of doing design stuff in her sketchbook, and was just using it to hash out raw designs as quickly as she read the books and wasn't taking time to develop them any further at all! Oh no!
Then the Remembering Fairy of Animation Regret** came and visited Tealin and said 'You should put a design through its paces; take a character through a range of expressions and poses to work out the kinks and learn what makes it work.' Tealin thought 'Of course! How could I have forgotten?' So she picked the main character from the most recent book she'd read and started work!
In grownup speak now: I am woefully out of practise at practical design stuff so I'm having a go at William: he's got a number of great scenes, he's fresh in my memory, but mostly I get to nurture my narcissism because I AM WILLIAM. At least ... before his arc of empowering self-discovery. I hope I never need one like that and can spend the rest of my life hiding behind a pencil but now we're getting off topic.
More than a year ago I wrested an image of William de Worde from the blankness that surrounded him in my head and came up with this:
There were some things about the original design that I wanted to keep or even amplify. I wanted his hair to be all at the top, sort of ... like an ice cream cone or sea anemone or the end piece of a sushi roll with lettuce in it, something to that effect. He needed that long arisocratic nose. And I wanted to capture a certain sort of jaw – I've known a few people with it; the chin sticks out but there isn't much of a contour on the sides. It's not a matter of pudginess, it's just a narrow jaw that isn't any wider than the neck below it, so it's kind of one slightly curved plane from the cheekbone to the neck. (The first person that comes to mind who I can use as an example is John Cleese. Apparently I based the anatomy of William's whole face on Cleese's, on a structural level anyway.) The biggest challenge, though, was the hair. In my original design it was so unstructured that it was practically impossible to reproduce or turn around, so I had to give it some sort of appealing shape as well as try to convey that it was curly. I even decided to push my luck and try to make it look like the sort of hair that thins early and might even be already starting to go, like this picture of Prince Edward. I also took a stab at the costume here, thinking that an 1820/30s style high-waisted waistcoat/jacket ensemble (example) would be in character, but I haven't experimented much with that.
Anyway, out of this page I liked the one in the bottom right corner the best (William always looks most himself when he's startled) so I worked with that:
The smiling and frowning faces are fliped right off that previous drawing; the others are noodling around. You even get to see my atrocious sketch of the 'I'm trying to work!' William, lucky you.
I slept on it (not literally) then did these the following day:
Am I getting somewhere? I am sparing your eyes further torment by eliminating the very bad On The Ledge sketch ... we've already had one of those, no more until they get better.
These were the same day:
He had to share the page with Coffee Girl, hence the narrowness of the image file...
I wanted to make his mouth the sort of mouth that looks like a hole cut in the face (moreso than a 'normal' mouth which is, in its very essence, a hole in the face) – not much extraneous structure or sculpted lips or anything, just HoleMouth. Does this look like that? At all?
It is WAY past my bedtime, so I shall just throw this up on the dartboard of LJ – Any suggestions are accepted! Maybe not implemented, but at least considered!
*Did you know it's been more than ten years since Hunchback came out? That ought to be illegal, or something.
**glingle glingle glingle
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-19 05:32 pm (UTC)