HOMEWORK OUTLINE: choose three of your favourite animated characters and study their shape and form
exercise class on blackboard: WIP
The work was to be submitted for Thursday the 24th of September
in Thursdays class we had a review on the board of the work on which we had to answer two questions.
- why did you chose them?
- what did you learn?
I struggled mainly by picking my favourite characters to draw for this task. after figuring out what to do from some practices I decided to stick with the style of animated cartoons as they tend to be the most shapely and I wanted to show how each cartoon represents very basic shapes in a simple and different way. I overall decided on these shows because I wanted to stick consistent with the style and medium of 2D animation. these cartoons were shows I enjoyed and loved the voice actors of with how they brought the characters personalities alive.
I chose SpongeBob as a basic test to understand the task as SpongeBob uses the most basic of each fundamental shapes that is used in every type of animation. I learnt a process on how too break down shapes from this and kept the structure throughout the rets of my work.
I chose adventure time as I love the show I like how the shows uses two contrasting shapes as the main characters an oval and rectangle. I also felt very inspired to draw fanart of my favourite scenes from the show. I learnt how to have fun with this task from drawing these characters in different poses it also gave me the idea to draw my favourite scenes from favourite episodes.
I chose centaurworld as its my new favourite and I wanted to understand the shape language used in a new animated cartoon. The shapes of this show combine a round base with a realistic top using a more box based torso. The face finishing with a unique combination of shapes which draws on the characters personality. The show used shape language very well to create characters that have their own animated quirks and shapes. I learnt how to translate shapes separately from the legs and the torso and how they can be animated alongside each other but differently.
I chose the grim adventures of billy and Mandy as its an old time favourites from my childhood. I also wanted to study a genre less light hearted that focuses on themes of horror as the grim reaper was more angular and I wanted to practice those shapes. I learnt that you can use the basic pointy shape language for villains and combine them with slightly rounder curved lines to create a good guy character with angular villainous shapes.
– warm up/understanding the task
SIMPLIFIED SHAPE LANGUAGE MALE BODYTYPE STUDY
SIMPLIFIED SHAPE LANGUAGE FEMALE BODYTYPE STUDY
STYLIZED SHAPE LANGUAGE
Shape language is used in every character design its the fundamental basis of how we translate visual aspects of a persons weight, gender, personality and looks based on their design to make a clear representation pf who the character is. Some artist and animators choose to push their character designs and shape forms into more exaggerated work. The more exaggerated shapes are the clearer the type of character they are will be. there are different styles that translate shape language in different ways too many to list however the ones i study I have outlined them the way I understand them. These types of styles are realistic, exaggerated, cartoon, illustrational, western and Asian. Each style can have a mixture of each or influences from some and I do believe there are more but this is what I have learnt so far.
Here is an example of a study I did on the cartoon illustrator and character designer scruffyshinanigans. here in this piece he pushes his shape and form to the extreme exaggerating features to highlight the characters personalities and fundamental recognisable shapes. I decided to study this.
Other artists I didn’t get to study but looked at to understand shape and form in stylized characters and how each artists style translates the same shapes in order to create unique characters.
– lucjan_pakulski this artist takes aspects from anime but softens them to make them more cartoon like the shape language is based of realism but uses rounder shapes.
– elohimes their style is also based of anime but with clearer more angular and straight lines the main focus is how colours are the shapes and translate the form of the characters
-grassflue they use a cartoon based style that uses a lot of dynamic lines and stretched shapes to create complex poses the shape language carries across clear into the action with a since of movement from the circular shapes.