I’ll admit, when I was younger I never really took too kindly to designing and writing characters. Writing backstories and carefully designing/developing a character was never something I was too particularly interested in. I felt that said characters were “too-overwritten” plain and un-relatable. When I tried to write or design a character I always felt like they either had too much or too little thought put into them both visually and backstory-wise. I struggled to create a balance within the characters as I used to think that characters were essentially just another prop to the background.
Growing as an illustrator, learning more about myself and character development, as of late it had finally clicked for me, where I feel like I finally realized that characters are vehicles of which the story/ message is being told and that caring for the character is just as important as the story, environment, concept, and message itself. I failed to realize that, and now I know that developing a project that is heavy on storytelling is a fine-tuned balance between all of these elements in storytelling. Placing more emphasis on one element or a few elements more than others can add more flair and originality to a work, but neglecting any one of these aspects in storytelling can come across very evidently within an audience. It is important to realize that each storytelling element has a synonymous relationship with one another to effectively tell a multi-faceted and rich story.
When creating the character seen, there was a lot to account for. I wanted to make sure that this character looked like it lived and breathed in the environment/world, as well as, making sure to stick with themes of mental illness and more specifically an embodiment of fear, confusion, hesitation, conflict, and hopelessness. I find designing characters a bit more challenging to create because there is so much to account for in the creation of a character but there also has to be this process of whittling and narrowing down the design of the character to truly make it into an effective and identifiable/relatable character.
With this character, I also went through various designing processes and experimentation in terms of stylistic quality and medium. I drew this character first in a sketchbook with gouache and black pencil crayon, then to lino-block printing for the texture of the character, then to water-soluble crayons and pencil crayons, and then finally to ink and pencil crayon. Like designing the first concept illustration, I was also able to deeply reflect on and realize how I wanted to depict the concept and themes at hand when exploring different mediums as each medium has its own look, mood, and expression tied with it. I also found that in this process I was able to discover something new about the character every time with each different medium I had explored as I was deeper reflecting on the character’s backstory with each of the mediums. I was then able to take these finished experimental pieces, compare/ contrast them, figure out what I liked/ didn't like about each of the mediums until I had come up with one method and mediums that I liked the look of with one another. I found this process being very important for this character as this was a great way to experiment on a small scale what I would like the rest of the work to follow in stylistic look and feel. This is important because this character will directly influence the environment and world of which it lives/controls so it is important that both this character and design of the world match up with one another or it will distract the reader and feel detached.
Although the development of both the environment and character could change later as the project is further developed. This is ok though because this process allows me to ensure and consciously realize that the two are synonymous with one another. This also allows me to be conscious of the fact that each storytelling element hinges on the other and has a very incredibly synonymous relationship. This process of designing this character has allowed me to effectively experiment, further stylistically develop a look/feel to both the character and to the other concept illustrations, as well as, allowing me to find what it is I am looking for within/visioning for the project as a whole.
This will be the last concept illustration of this project as after the process of each I now feel that I have enough ideas, realized influences, themes, and concepts that I know I want to be developed and I feel are ready to be developed into a finished project. But until then, stay tuned for what's coming soon…
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