Thursday 17 November 2016

Final Character Designs: Concept Turnaround




This is my final design for the minor character of 'Prometheus'; Zeus nemesis, and the character that gives the two men a hint on how to beat the king of Gods.
Sly and cunning, I based his design off a quote from the original text "A fox is subtlety itself", tying my theme of anthropomorphism into the design too. I wanted it to look like Prometheus had thrown on a mask and cloak as his disguise for patrolling the city in search of Euelpides and Pisthetairus, steering clear of Zeus' watch from the heavens. Because I wanted it to be obvious that it was a disguise and not an actual animal, I designed a large lumpy hunchback, a mask with boldly contrasting colours so it wouldn't look like it's connected to the rest of the character, and used a silhouette of a person hiding beneath a blanket as inspiration to create his shape.

His cloak will be made from a collection of foraged materials that the character would be able to create or collect himself; leaves, hair, feathers, twigs. How I would want it to appear is a moving, rustling, life of its own, maybe even squirming or morphing slightly, in order to hint Prometheus' immortal powers as a God. (Below the turn around mage I created  a small sheet of certain textures that could be used for the cloak, or that the cloak texture and pattern could shift between.)

Even as a minor character, I wanted to put as much effort and development into Prometheus as I would do a main character, as I feel that the personality and justifications to the design will be better fleshed out this way. By undertaking the full character design process, I was also able to learn more about my environment, and also consider more deeply the making aspects of this assignment. At first, I wanted to create an immovable concept model of this character, about 4 inches tall, as a display model for showcasing the film it would be in. However, through developing these ideas I realised that in retrospect, that idea is quite boring and not really furthering skills or narrative any further. This way I was able to come to much more in depth or challenging ideas.
Overall though, I'm pleased with my design, and think it could be interesting as some kind of large costume piece, rather than a small model!

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