“A good caricature looks nothing like the person but captures their essence.” – Genndy Tartakovsky
Genndy Tartakovsky is somewhat of a well known name in the animation industry, he is a animator, director writer and producer of children’s targeted media, famous for shows and films such as Hotel Transylvania, Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars. Tartakovsky is responsible for shaping a large portion of childrens childhoods in the late 1990s to even modern day! as his show, Dexter’s laboratory a show made in 1995 and is still an enjoyable watch over 20 years later. For this task, we are to take inspiration from his work, apply his techniques into ours and create what we believe to be a character that would fit the setting of one of his produced worlds. I am particularly eager to create a Hotel Transylvania character as I grew up watching that franchise.
Through reference of the characters of Hotel Transylvania it shows that Tartakovsky focuses on shape language to express his characters, these shapes can be exaggerated to make it seem as if the character is larger and help create a more intimidating demeanour, such as Frankenstein. Dracula however is more triangular to express a more pointed personality, the triangular shaping adding to his vampiric nature. He may be a more serious character compared to the rest whom aside from Frankenstein all have curved round body shapes. The characters almost resemble that of rubber hose stylization where everything is very flexible and rubbery/stretchy. These round characters feel much more friendly/approachable
I want to create a character that is monstrously silly looking imitating the shape language of the mummy character who is very roundish and much more cartoonishly exaggerated compared to the rest who are much more humanoid. I want to keep in mind this mentality of thinking of the shaping language, then the character.
MY OWN DESIGNS
experimenting with some concepts I find myself struggling regarding a design that I find enjoyable. I am going to look further into the art of Hotel Transylvania to hopefully find some inspiration.
In this concept art for a wolf character, I really enjoy the exaggerated proportions of the head and especially the eyes on fig.2. Even though the art in this is very stylized, I can recognise aspects of Tartakovsky with the large upper back almost hunched over. This reminds me of the General Grievous design from his Star Wars: Clone Wars. Aswell as this hunched over posture being brought into the final design of the wolf man in Hotel Transylvania.
For this ”Human fly” I enjoy the rounded nature of it, how its eyes almost cover the entire face. Overall I am much more inclined to make a creature based monster rather than a monster with a human appearance.
I tried merging the ”human fly” concept with my ”scary clown” and tried making a bug clown hybrid thingy. However, I lean more towards a ”toy” themed monster than the traditional, organic kind. I explored a sort of ‘building blocks’ like character, but once again, I didn’t find myself enjoying this design as it just felt a little bit too abstract for Tartakovsky’s style. I found a Jack in the Box character to be all the more interesting as it has that ”scary clown” aesthetic.
The main inspiration around this concept was the rubber hose like nature of the characters from hotel Transylvania, how they all look rather flexible and stretchy.
An example of this rubber hose-like appearance is in Jonathan’s limbs, where he almost looks like a toy as his body stretches and pulls through fast movements. I want to lean into this silly cartoon-like structure for that appearance.
Especially in the exaggerated large eyes and as well as the round shaping of his character where everything has a nice curve to it.
Experimenting with colour combinations, I wanna reflect the similar usage of colours as seen in the image below with fig.2, where the cyan-green is applied with the lighter lavender. It is a very unexpected, however surprisingly appealing colour combo!
For my prop, it’ll be somewhat simple, just the box that ”Jack” sleeps in.
the colour scheme would likely fit in theme with the characters design- I’m leaning towards the colour scheme of the purple and green pallet as seen above.
PUSHING FURTHER!
14.11.24
In class I was given feedback on my jack in the box character, there wasn’t much as the design fit that aesthetic we were looking for from Genndy Tartakovsky. Yay!!! the only feedback given was to try and push further in that cartoon like design, try and make the proportions more exaggerated, specifically the neck collar, try and make it bigger and more pushed out. I decided to apply this mentality to the majority of the design.
This is my updated design, I do prefer it a lot more than my previous one! I decided to make the hood and lower coat much more triangular while exaggerating those two laces in the front. Alongside the spring at the bottom of the body I tried to keep a triangular shape to it, having it shrink near the bottom.
In class I made a little experimental face shape just to familiarize myself with using sculpting tools, I actually had a blast with this! albeit I did this without video tutorial help this will not be my actual model! but I think its a pretty good first try.
HOMEWORK
Just for the fun of it I experimented by adding a bow and rather slimmer neck collar since I didn’t apply these ideas in my concept arts. Im not too much of a fan of these however it was worth the attempt!
Hotel Transylvania reference images – https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/hotel-transylvania-3-art-book-is-now-online-and-free-168183.html
https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-8/art-of-hotel-transylvania