As soon as we were given a character assignment I got to work thinking through some concepts and what I wanted to achieve.
I started thinking through different characters and character types that could be adapted to fit this brief; animals, children, aliens, robots, sweet old ladies feeding birds in a park. I just wanted to get as many thoughts down as possible. I was drawn to a few of these ideas in particular:
I felt the ‘sweet old lady’ idea could have worked nicely with pleasant patterns and pastel colours complimenting some appealing, round shapes.
I also liked the idea of anthropomorphised animals with occupations, thinking immediately of cats and back to a character I created last semester
I was also thinking of Sir John Tenniel’s work on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which has inspired me for a while now
And of character designs featured in ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ (2009).
From this train of thought (of animals on two legs in human outfits) I came to think of my own pets. We have four West Highland White Terriers (westies) that fit the idea of ‘cute characters’ remarkably well- see photographs.
And so my mind darted to ways I could create a character based around them. Having an interest in vintage menswear, my ideas veered in the direction of evening wear, considering black and white tie dress codes and how nicely they would look with a white dog dressed in them. Graphic and simplistic blocks of black and white from head to toe.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/JoshG762/formaleveningwear/
Luckily I had a Pinterest board of mens formal eveningwear that I was able to draw inspiration from and expand upon for this assignment.
Upon seeing this particular work (ca. 1930s) of two men stood smoking in white tie at a horse race from mens fashion illustrator Laurence Fellows I was struck across the cranium with immediate inspiration by way of costuming and posing, and as such my character drawings from here on were based primarily off of it.
When Henry saw the above drawings he pointed out that I need to consider how I will achieve the fur, since we aren’t able to use fur simulations or anything like that, so what fur he has will need to be sculpted. I kept this in mind when finalising my design.
From here I was decided on my character and was ready to begin sculpting.