Leonie’s small blog island says hullooo! (: I needed to revamp my header again and profile picture over this past week; bear with me.
Let’s go crazy! Journal Time!
3rd Wed
PV The Secretary and Janitor studies and blocking in the body shapes for the turnaround already; no time for figure drawing today as I sketched traditionally instead before going all into turnaround templates. I’m feeling like I’m doing a paper cut out clothes game!
Did some studies of existing pretty girl art and 60’s references I was given and/or found. The Secretary is a stereotypical doll like 60’s lady after all.
Realised from these references that it’s either too innocent/friendly, too unlikable/evil, or too seductive as I play around with the mouth. I needed something more vacant and expressionless.
Stopped sketching for ideas for both the Secretary and the janitor here. I kind of got them both visualised in my head as I figured one would look like an hourglass 60’s mannikin and the other a hunched over old bean with huge eyes and ears just because I like some character shape variation. The middle doodle of the Janitor is the closest to the final concept. Since large, vacant eyes is to be the most common thing with all the puppet characters, all that’s left is to try out are clothes and hair. I could experiment more if I liked but characters that are *meant* to be stereotypical and easily recognisable don’t allow too much room for crazy experimentation so I went the other direction; see how far I can “play” with the stereotype.
4th Thurs
figuuure drawing exercise
I hope I’m getting better at gestures; I can’t really tell until I do this heaps.
“Hey, don’t be ashamed, look over there and see someone feeling sick instead”
“Now rise up and follow me as I do a new yoga move.”
“What was that? I was too busy admiring myself in the mirror.”
“Man with no muscles in his legs. More details at ten.”
“Now showing: Witness ultimate strength and flexibility!”
PV The Secretary: hair choices
5th Fri
PV The Secretary: outfit choices and here they are from designs 1 to 10 up for voting. Groovy 60’s fashion! Note these will still need refining once we’ve honed down hairstyle and outfit. If you’re wondering what the asterisks were for, I’m marking down my personal favourites for further development for other purposes.
WIP 1: office-like outfit* and innocent looking hairdo
WIP 2: Ribbony hair and trendy outfit*
WIP 3: I like the waist bow in particular
WIP 4: Reminds me of an aircraft hostess but I like the outfit* and hair* anyway
WIP 5: Her back view hair needs some styling later if we do choose this one
WIP 6: Another office vibe variation* and short curly hair
WIP 7: More interesting outfit* with a tied up hairdo*
WIP 8: Pixie 60’s cut* with an outfit that emphasises the waist*
WIP 9: Mature looking hairdo and pattern dependent dress
WIP 10: Puffy hairdo that needs to be redrawn* and simple dress.
PV The Janitor: sketch
Had to change the header image again! Rex is featured instead shouting “Art Adventuuures!”.
I didn’t like having my name so big in the header. My name’s already in the url of the blog anyway.
6th Sat
PV The Janitor: finishing up the lines! Some faded comparison images of the other two characters. I think this guy is my favourite because of his creepy tentacle eyes and how the creepiness level goes to the max when he opens his mouth. Or maybe it’s my favourite because beside being told that he had to be old and skinny, I was allowed to do what I wanted with the third supporting character (not as much pressure as with the main and supporting characters). (:
WIP: I had the mop wired instead as his hand is glued to the stick! He still needs cleaning up.
7th Sun
PV feedback: still awaiting for votes for the Secretary so I extended my time to the end of tomorrow
PV The Janitor: blocking in and refining him
Revamped to a new profile picture as shown below. Despite appearances, it is still a loose representation of me: scary looking, slash of serious and silly, strange and short person with the black and pink glasses. I was getting tired and got bothered by my vector ghostly white and black portrait of myself and I wanted a change (and a break from doing the concepts). (:
I don’t know who actually looks like this super deformed creature. I don’t really want to look like this though as it will be even more frightening to look like this in real life; such tremendous eyes! Anyhow, this was drawn just for fun. She looks like she’s up to something or she’s really confused & slow at catching up with current events.
8th Mon
PV The Janitor: painting him and finally finishing up is greyscale design though I wasn’t feeling too good physically; gotta keep going!
PV The Janitor Greyscale Concept art so far unless I get some nitpicking feedback on time.
PV The Secretary: sorting out the final dress and hair as the whole team got their votes in today. Didn’t get to do any figure drawing as time was running short.
9th Tues aka headache day
PV The Secretary: refining the lineart, blocking her in and started a bit of painting. Went to sleep at a time like normal people do as a headache kept haunting me.
PV The Janitor sketches: did some while watching my bro finish Bioshock the game
The Janitor doing…his thing. Don’t question it.
Reflection for the Week
Not as much stuff to show relative to last week’s but I needed a bit more recharge/downtime this week. I did a lot of other everyday things and played the Undertale demo (which is on Kickstarter and it greatly made me feel the most guilt ever and when I thought I got away from it, the game rubbed my face back into it).
It’s funny how I didn’t even have The Janitor character in my original story pitch (I don’t know whose idea it was, I would credit him here if I remembered) but this character is becoming my favourite character of the project, even though he’s not really an absolutely necessary character. He’s only “cute” at sight because I had to keep to the “large vacant eyes” rule for all the puppet characters but arguably the fact that they are large and glossy, he is probably even more creepier. I do think he still needs some refinements and polishing with the help of colour but for now, the concept is done.
To my dismay, I had to put figure drawing exercises on hold as I needed to get more of the Janitor and Secretary done before the added busyness sets in during the upcoming PAXAus week.
Thanks for looking, especially those who have been reading! (: Until next time, Leonie (UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
