Week 2 - Character Design

In week 2 we had character Design with Julia Bracegirdle. She put alot of focus on alternative methods of character design, and alternative character designs. The week started out with alot of focus at shapes; hence the first thing we made was shadowplays. This one was made by me, Kenneth, Benny and the intern.



Eventually we got around to creating a set of characters based on the short story "Taste" by Roald Dahl (he also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). It is a rather curious story, and very well narrated since we received it in sound instead of text. You can read the story in very short format here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_(short_story) - if you don't want the ending spoiled then just read the two first parts.
While Julia suggested alternative methods to creating the characters, I really just felt like spitting out alot of different suggestions for the characters:

The characters physical appearance was not really described in the story, so we had alot of creative freedom with them - except for Richard Pratts lower lip and noose that was troughoutly and rather funny described when he tasted the wine. It was an easy decision to go for the monstrous Pratt. I think several of the Mikes would have worked, though in the end I thought that the one with big furrows on his forehead would suit Mikes unsecure and worried character best. My initial thoughts on Louise were that she should be the one we could feel sympathy for, since both Mike and Pratt was gambling about her. So the upper-second-from-the-left Louise was my first choice. However after a short discussion with my teacher I decided that I might as well just present all three of them as unsympatic characters, thus enabling me to do whatever I wanted with them. I also played with the idea of giving Louise a sort of smoky form, since she smokes in the story, but it didn't work well enough. The final characters ended like this: