Character Design Week 3: Sci-fi Victorian Era

Figure 1: Research on Victorian dresses and Initial Sketch

Figure 2: Without the fan in front of her face and the fan itself

Figure 3: Quick sketch of the dress

Figure 4: Sketch of Victorian Era Sci-fi Alien

For this project I was given the Victorian Era and to use it to influence a Sci-fi character. For my character I did a beautiful alien that would prey on humans, who'd draw men in with her gorgeous face only to reveal that her lower face is grotesque and that her hands are elongated claws. I based her outfit on early Victorian Era dresses where a V-shaped bodice and small waist was popular, as well as the bell pagoda sleeves that I thought would be good to hide how weird and monstrous her hands actually are. Her waist is tiny and based on how the Victorian women would use corsets to achieve a small waist and big dresses with large boning to emphasise large hips which was very fashionable in the early 1800s.

Character Design Week 2: 3 Pirate Characters

Fig 1: Initial Ideas

Figure 2: Going into more detail on the hero girl pirate and the villain rich guy

Figure 3: Continuation

Narrative: Initial Granny Design Concept Art

Fig 1: Some Initial designs using reference images of old ladies 

Fig 2: some more refined and stylised ideas for the Granny

I drew some designs for the Granny character in my group narrative piece. I started off using references for face shapes and to figure out where the wrinkle placement is, so the first designs could be classed as "too realistic". In the second picture I started with easy shapes like circles and ovals that would be easy to model in maya, then played with the proportions to come up with a range of ideas for how she might look. Trying to get the "Femme Fetale" aspect in was very hard but I tried to implement some characteristics in the designs like with the hair and facial mole placements being under the eye and lip as well as darkish lipstick.

Character Design: Mary Poppins/Neanderthal

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This challenge to take aspects from a known character and put it onto a type of generic character, was difficult at the start, for my characters they were Mary Poppins and Neanderthal. At the start I just drew Mary Poppins in a sort of caveman attire. Then I started to think more of what her character is and added elements of that, making her classy Victorian fashion was made into a modest fur dress and her umbrella and magic bag is now a stick and fur sack that she takes with her while wanderer to cave to cave.

CG Artist Toolkit: 2D Facial Rigging