#characterdesignadaptation

I’ve been very exited to start this project. I love designing and drawing characters. For this project we have to design two characters based on the story The Strange Case Of Jekyll an Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

At first I did think about sticking more closely to the original story. 

I was looking at the idea of duality and how it’s present in other stories like Black Swan/ Swan Lake and The Wizard Of Oz. There’s probably other examples as well as in most stories there is a general, binary concept of good and evil.

However I quickly realised that this was not going to work for me. Try as I might, I don’t really connect with classical fiction such as Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austen. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, I just can’t pay attention to those types of books so I felt change was necessary.

I had this sudden idea. When I was younger I loved fairies. I had a few colouring books that I’d draw from and I had this one book that I absolutely loved. Now a days I love clowns and I actually collect clown dolls so I thought I would marry the two and make clown fairy for the Jekyll character and a Jester Pixie for the Hyde.

First I thought about The type of environment I was going to have my characters in. I want to kind of go with a fantasy, fairy tale toy sort of vibe and I knew I wanted to use mushrooms in some way for the circus area so I got some reference images of the different types.

I also looked into things like clown costumes and different types of clown dolls 

I really liked the mask that I was able to find in the second research sheet. I thought it could be a good face for the jester character and I just love how beautifully unique each clown doll is and looking at these and my own makes me think that one way or another, i am having a frill collar.

I really liked these vintage illustrations and took great inspiration from the various outfits. most notably the baggy two piece set with the pointed hat although I also really like all the others so after this project those will probably be alternative outfits.

I also had a look at clown couture. Just in case this was something I wanted to play with but I may just leave it for special shows in the circus as they are very lavish and extravagant. Much to complex for a stop motion puppet. 

I looked at flower fairy illustrations for references for wings and for a reference in case I wanted to make my character flower fairy esque but I realised that this style would probably work better if I was taking a 2D approach as it has that traditional medium charm. So I looked up different tv shows that I’m a fan of and have fond childhood memories of.

I had originally planned to post this research a long with the research I did around fairies but the original files got corrupted. Luckily I had research saved in a word document so I just redid it all.

This post is dedicated to all the colour charts, and designs that I ended up not going with. 

First up Berry Tart! My Hyde character.

I had the design you see above you in my mind as the final design for a while. It’s this sort of dark pixie, harlequin sort of idea with a face that acts more like a mask. I think this worked really well and I did like it but I feel as though the newer design is slightly better in presentation. However, revisiting it has made me realise how much I like it. perhaps in the future i may find a way to marry the two designs.

The sketches however had one thing in common, they were all too complicated and extravagant. Not really designed with animation in mind. 

And now for Angel Delight.

Angel Delight took less iterations to get to where I got. I mostly played around with colours and I whilst at the sketching stage I had the feeling that they were almost there but not quite what I wanted. 

My Puppet  was actually one of the first things I finished on this project but I hadn’t had a chance to blog about it until now.

SO, here’s the process.

This was the template I drew out for Angel Delights top. It was easy to use and did it’s job.

I constructed the body using a piece of twisted wire, milliput and foam. I photographed this base next to the wand prop for scale and I was pretty hapy with how this was looking so far. I thought the hands were very successful and I  wanted to make the legs thick because it was important for the trousers to be puffy.

A close up of the hand. I put a wad of milliput for the palm and then placed 5 single wires in it for the fingers. Then covered it with foam. It works quite well and since clowns usually wear white gloves, I decided to leave them like this down the line.

I struggled  a bit with the head. I tried to make it the same shape as my drawing but found that incredibly difficult to do. I used a FIMO porcelain look polymer clay but I think I over baked it because it went a bit orange on some parts. Nothing a bit of paint couldn’t fix.

Little sneak peek of the top. Ruffles and all!

Yes that is blood. As you can see. I tried to make the feet out of hard foam but the material showed to be too brittle and I actually gave myself a bit of a gash. 

I learnt from this and decided to make the feet/shoes out of bulsa wood instead and this worked much better.

AND WHALA! 

THIS is the result!

On the face I used standard acrylic paints. the top was made from one of my mums old tank tops, as was the hat, and for the hair I used a bath sponge. This made the hair super big. I like how puffy it is and up close it gives a really interesting texture that could possibly be likened to curls.

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I’m not sure whether this turnaround really works but it gets the point across. Unfortunately I was unable to produce an animated turnaround due to the pandemic and personal issues.

As you can see, my puppet doesn’t look exactly like my original character design and I did take some creative liberties, such as making the shirt ruffles the same colour as the collar and trousers. Not only because it was easier to construct but I think it actually makes it pop more. 

Aaaaand This Is the cast Line up! Unfortunately I have lost the individual files of each character. They some how got corrupted. As long as they’re on the cast line up I think its ok. I’m overall happy with how this turned out. I think the scale is good an realistic and I think it’s believable that these characters are part of the same story. From Left to right; Angel Delight, Bunt Cake and Candy Floss.

I also came to a decision regarding the final design of my Hyde character. 

Through my research into fairies I uncovered many folklore and mythological stories of the creatures that many believe to be part on the world inhabited by fairies and other faefolk alike. I decided to have fun with this side of my research so I formatted it into a field guide of sorts. 

I decided that I previously didn’t go into enough detail in my research so I decided to expand on it and format it a bit better.