Mr. Willy Wonka

Trying to put my new understanding of character design to work on some more characters. This is one of my favourite characters from one of my favourite films (I haven't read the book). I love both the original and the more recent Burton version, but being an 80's kid, Gene Wilder will always be the real Willy Wonka to me. For this design I wanted to forget both of these films. 

I based it loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright.

One of the things I loved most about Wonka in the original film and wanted to capture was his ambivalence. I remember as a kid not quite knowing whether he could be trusted or not. I hope that my design has some of that quality in it.

Jekyll & Hyde - WIP

 

Here are more design process sketches for Jekyll & Hyde. Doing all this research is a worthwhile discipline which I'm not used to doing as thoroughly as this.

Jekyll & Hyde gestures

 
I still have quite a bit of work to do in clarifying the designs, but I thought it might help to flesh out their personalities if I did these quick story/gesture sketches first.

My idea for a fresh take on Jekyll & Hyde was to make Jekyll a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor who's obsessed with potency herbs. Hyde would be his wild party-animal state after taking the concoction of herbs.

4 weeks in, and the course has been a lot of fun, a lot of drawing, and a lot of eye-opening. My biggest challenge has been simplifying the design and making it read clearly. The biggest eye-opener has been thinking more of shape than anatomy.

more character sketches

 

 

Here are some of my other ideas for the Walter Chipwitther character back in week 1. You can see the initial sketches here for the designs I chose to take further.

Bowler hat gentleman

If you caught my last post you'd have heard I'm enrolled in fundamentals of character design at Schoolism. I always knew there was something missing in my approach to character design. Over the years I've managed now and then to intuitively fluke some of the principals I'm now learning with Stephen. However just 3 weeks in I already feel I have a better grasp of these principals. Now when I revisit my favourite artists' character designs I understand much better why I like them and I know my own process will never be the same again.

'Walter Chipwitther' character design

 It's week one of my character design course with Stephen Silver. I was really anxious about submitting my homework as there is so much talent in the class! I remind myself to not compare. My homework was to come up with a design for a character called 'Walter Chipwitther', a jolly, wealthy entrepreneur in his 60's. Here's two of my more finished versions. The idea with the rats in case you were wondering was to make him a kind of wealthy eccentric with his unusual pets.

Imaginary landscape II

Another imaginary landscape in gouache.

Secondary characters

These are a few of the secondary characters I designed. Even though some of them only appeared very briefly I wanted to make each character as individual as possible.

Character designs - Legends in their own lunchbox

These are the main characters I designed. My set in the series was written by Australian author Paul Collins. He created some really loveable and recognizable personalities. Lucy, who is on the end (right side) ended up being toned down a bit. Specifically her buck teeth. It was felt they tended too much towards negative stereotypes.

imaginary landscape

A while back I had the idea to do a series of these imaginary landscapes. I hope I can find the time to do more of these soon. I can't decide which I like doing more, characters or environments.

Day 30 - wolves (final day)

Day 30 (final day)
Topic - wolves continued
 
I read that the Latin roots of the word satisfaction mean "enough action". I must have done enough drawing the past month because I feel pretty satisfied. I even had to take an emergency trip to the shops to buy another sketchbook. Holding a completed sketchbook feels good, it somehow seems much heavier.
 
I hope you enjoyed following my personal challenge. If you did then please like and share with your art-loving friends over on my facebook page here. Thanks for all of your support. Kind wishes to you all!

Day 29 - wolves

Day 29
Topic - Wolves

A fun topic but my time is short today, so here's a quick grab.