In January, as I was beginning to research ideas for the Final Major Project, one of my initial ideas was to do a project on Character design. This was because in my second year, I did a character design piece on sellotape bungee jumping, and the research behind that, and the project itself was fun to work on.
Jack Woodcock then sent me a link to the site of Fran Ferriz, who does a lot of character design work.
These are some of his 2D work. The expression of the characters and forms of the bodies are very exaggerated, giving them an almost cute look and comic look, toning down on the fact they are characters with attitude. The colours are bold and bright, with clear line quality that changes in thickness. His 2D work is much more graphical, and I can imagine them being used in music videos and student promotional work. This is because it reminds me of the work for the band Gorillaz.
Example 0f Gorillaz promotional artwork -
These are some examples of Fran Ferriz 3D work. Again, his character have a cute, comical appeal to them. One think I learnt from my research is that good character design is a character that conveys emotion well. Fran Ferriz achieves this mainly with the eyes. (windows to the soul)
The eyes on the pig make him looks almost nervous, where as the character below looks angry and evil. The texture work is very light and subtle, with more time spent on composition, idea and form.
The one thing I was disappointed about was that there was no animation work. I could imagine these characters being used in a child's program or advertisement. The tone would be very humorous and fun, especially if these characters (that are all very different in look) were placed in situations with each other. For example, and angry looking alien bringing down the flying pig. Unusual idea, unusual means original, and original means that an idea is not boring.
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