Final Piece

For the final out come we were to create an A2 piece of work which could be made into a print of our original character. I was originally planning to do this work on paper with acrylic paint to better match my colour swatches, although in the end due to lack of supplies I decided to tackle this piece digitally and am glad that I did as it is far more in my comfort zone therefore producing a better, neater outcome.

The process however was laborious as my art programme crashed twice at various stages, erasing most of my progress.

I had previously had a lined detailed background which I had to change to a more digitally painted look, as seen above in a work in progress screen shot.

However in the end I was very pleased with my final outcome, I feel it sums up my character and the idea of a Ring Mistress, I'm happy with the colours, which I ended up adding saturation to. I also feel that it works as a print. If I were to do it differently I would have not have lines on the character, but I could not edit that due to the file crashing and the 'line art' layer losing transparency.

Animations!

We had two lessons on making hand drawn animations using iMotion HD - an iphone app where you take photos of each frame and it pieces them together for you. I enjoyed this very much and it is what pushed me into looking at applying for animation courses, as I felt my results were quite successful. We were originally encouraged to make random marks and connect them with linking frames, which I attempted at first and found it difficult to capture a feel for the project through this, so decided to do an animation of my character for the Circus project

The beginnings of my animation. I was happy that I am able to draw quickly when presented with this particular aspect of the project as it was surprising how much work produced such a short animation.

I originally planned to line and possibly colour the slides although due to how long it took, along with how the rustic looking pencil sketches worked with the 'shaky' look of the app, I decided against it.

How my animation ended.

Approx 50 frames

Character Creation

This exercise was by far my favourite in the project, creating an A1 sheet of character designs to choose from. I was pushed to experiment with styles and mediums instead of staying within my safety zone, which I didn't enjoy very much. I personally disliked the messy results I achieved with mediums such as watercolour and ended up choosing the design which I drew in my usual mediums (fine liner/colour pencil)

This was the design that I chose in the end (although ultimately pulling an aspect from another design - thigh high boots)

I felt this design best encapsulated what a Ring Mistress would be like, as well as best fitting with my inspirations.

When I had chosen this design I worked on drawing up a few expressions for her based on photographs of a friend.

Close ups of the expressions

Colour Palettes

We were told to look at colour palettes for our characters, as aforementioned I already had one set in mind, although I also decided to look at colours to contrast it for the background, particularly that would make the vibrant red and gold pop. I enjoyed this as I do not use my knowledge of colour theory often nor do I particularly play around with my colour choices. In the end I created a sketchbook page of colour swatches with the colours I chose

My paint palette while deciding on colours

Pictures from pinterest that influenced my colour choices

Gold Glitter

Taylor Swift

Make Up

We were assigned to draw from life to get a feel for peoples faces. Since I had decided on something big and striking for my character I decided to go all out and do Circus themed make up on my family members which I then drew from.

I felt like this exercise was quite successful as not only did I get a feel for faces and expressions it also helped me play around with peoples pre-existing features such as eyebrows and lip shapes. I also decided on dramatic eye make up for my character

A look I was influenced by on pinterest

Ring Leader

The Circus member that I received was Ring Leader, which was what I was hoping to receive as I already had ideas for that when we were given the brief. Immediately I knew I was going to make my character female and began to look up Ring Mistresses

Their outfits were reminiscent of burlesque to me, so I decided to continue down that route, adding Burlesque themed outfits to my pinterest board.

I had many ideas already of what I wanted my character to look like, including a classic colour scheme of reds, golds, and black, along with the iconic top hat and riding whip. While searching along these themes I came across a look from the Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2010 Haute Couture Collection which served as my main inspiration.

Project Start!

At the start of our project we had to gather research on Circuses, including artist research and images. For this I decided to make a Pinterest Board found [here] full of my inspirations for the project, which I then made into a mood board in my sketch book.