Sunday, 5 April 2015

Week 27 - *Come on and Slam and Welcome to the Art JAAAM!?!?! Or (a chilling elegy)


Week 27 – *Come on and Slam and Welcome to the Art JAAAM!?!?! Or (a chilling elegy)

Unrelated Space Jam Gif - I just really like Space Jam

This week was filled with anime, drawing and well more anime and drawing. Oh yeah I also went to an art Jam on Easter Friday.

Taking a break from Game art I think has resulted in me going back to 14 year old self of drawing anime and manga in my room, however this time I've got a basic understanding of anatomy perspective under my belt so it’s no way near as bad as my deviant art phase.

Anyway this leads me onto my next point, after spending so long on the course studying about design and well drawing manga characters this week, I started to get a real appreciation for one of my favourite manga artists Akira Toriyama.

Yes before I start, of course I am aware of how bad and almost incestrious manga can look and also aware of the fact that there isn’t a UK manga market so becoming a manga artist is defiantly a no go. However during the holidays I found myself just captivated at how Toriyama approaches character design.

NOTE - THIS IS NOT TORIYAMA'S WORK - THIS IS MANGA AT ITS WORST

One character of Toriyama’s design; Frieza has always conveyed good character design in the sense of subverting character conventions. The character within the lore of his text is supposed to be the Grand Emperor of the Universe. A super powerful being who is supposed to bring fear to all who see him. Yet the design of his first form is a small, pink effeminate man.

This is Frieza By Toriyama

Said design draws parallels to that of a French aristocrat during the French revolution or even Napoleon himself. Rather than showing power and evil in physical fitness this is represented via the nature of his gesture which conveys arrogance and the feminine look which conveys a sense of affluence and said intertextual reference to this aristocrat trope.

French Aristocrat - looks similar right
Napoleon

I would like to end this mini rant by also mentioning how Toriyama designs the evolved forms of Frieza by falling within convention of making him physically bigger however then designing his final form as the small effeminate man he started with thus subverting the idea of making someone bigger to convey strength in character design and rather using the look of confidence and arrogance in a character to depict power and intimidation.

Frieza's final form to the left
So yes of course I ended up drawing Frieza during the week.

Moreover this week I got really inspired by a video by Max Landis director of Chronicle. In the video he discusses how Professional wrestling is more like a soap opera about wresting rather than actual wrestling. Bring this back to Art related stuff this inspired me to produce some character designs based on professional wrestling’s over the top characters. I wish to work on this project in the future as a little personal project.

One of the wrestlers I'm working on

Studying shape's and also animal anatomy on the side

Frieza really does inspire me in how I design villainous characters

Finally on Friday I went to an art Jam with some friends off the course. This session mainly consisted of designing vehicles and creatures via a mashy monsters exercise we did. We got the idea and name from an exercise we did on the first day of the course in which we write random names of objects, manmade and natural on a piece of paper and then we put it in a hat. We mix it up, pick two words and then design it. I can’t remember for the life of me what I got and what I made. The results are below. I think one of them is a Rabbit Mech and Butt Mech and a weird octopus/dear like creature. It was pretty fun anyhow and it got me to use my imagination in ways I don’t usually use it.


Other stuff I got up to over the holidays


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Chris Anka Web Developer

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