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Friday 9 January 2009

Concepts - Male Character

I have left the male character in my film for a while now, i have been partly avoiding him and concentrating on the dog because he is the star. However i have eventually started work on designing him. I had the idea of calling him Tristan which is a Greek name related to tragedy, but based on the style of my film- two characters in a confined flat, his name is pretty irrelevant. Anyway just to recap, an initial influence was the artist Modigliani. His portraits have distorted awkward faces and expressions which i think would give my man a distant, 'alien' look as well as complementing my arty aesthetic. This may however pose challenges with character animation and conveying emotion.


Below are some of my initial sketches. As a sad character i have kept him skinny and downcast, but tried to look for ways to give his body some substance.


I feel a lot of these concepts are over designed and also too detailed, as i intent to do the clean up and painting in photoshop. However, i like some off these as starting points, so i will start working with them on the computer to find an appealing and workable design.

A quick colour mock-up,

3 comments:

gerry said...

Have you seen Bellville Rendevous? The character designs have some reference to Modigliani and in terms of conveying emotion there is no dialogue but so much is said. Just be aware of what emotions you want to convey in your piece, if the film is only 3 minutes long and the dog is your main character then you need to tell your audience what kind of person Tristan is from the start of your film.

Jack Bonnington said...

thanks for your feedback gerry, its very useful. i have seen belleville, it was one of my original influences for the film.

i suppose tristan has too be a character the audience warm to immediately, so they can sympathise with all the bad things that happen to him while laughing at his misfortune, in a tragic sense. i see him as being quite peaceful and accepting of his misfortunes

gerry said...

It's important to be able to convey pathos and humour if those are the things you want your character to be, so much of that can be done through mise-en-scene, colour palette, timing, etc. Remember, sometimes so much is conveyed to an audience by using moments of silence and non-movement, you don't have to have everything animated at all times!