Character Design: Task 1 - Personification

29.08.22 - 26.09.22 (Week 1 - Week 5)
Chai Yi Xuan / 0346645 / B' Creative Media
Character Design / Entertainment Design
Task 1 / Personification

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INSTRUCTIONS

To-Do List:

• Study and observe existing universe (from any media) and identify world settings
  
• Create a character based in selected existing universe
  

Week 1

At the start of this assignment, I had multiple universe that I wanted to play around with. Among them, I chose My Hero Academia (MHA) as the world I want to create my character for. I looked up for the fandom wiki page for most of the information to fill in the world settings.

World setting of My Hero Academia:-

• Location: Japan
• People: A society where having superpowers(Quirks) are normal, some people’s Quirks affect their appearances
• Government: Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• Social Classes: Heroes, villains, vigilante, regular citizens (sub-category: Quirkless)
• History: With the appearance of Quirks, people use their powers to their advantage. Then heroes rose to stop crime
• Time Period: Modern Japan
• Technology: Support items— technology that assists the user by augmenting/complementing their Quirk strengths and weaknesses (vary depending on powers)
• Magic/Power: Superpowers known as Quirks (may be categorised by emitter, mutant & transformer)

Once we had a good enough understanding of the universe we chosen, we are to compile a moodboard for the character we wanted to create. We also have to decide if our character is the hero/protagonist or the villain/antagonist of the universe. Since MHA's main story focuses a lot on the conflict between heroes and villains, I wanted to create a vigilante— a character who does good but their action is against the law.

Figure 1.1: Summary/Description of character Aikawa Mizuki

Since Horikoshi, the author of MHA, names his characters based on their quirks, appearance and personality, I named my character as Aikawa(beloved river) Mizuki(water crystal). Initially, I wanted Mizuki to have the ability to control blood, but there was an existing character with the same power, hence I went with water instead.

After figuring out my character's details and backstory, I searched up for visuals that would help with conceptualising Mizuki. I made sure to consider how Mizuki's power works and how her costume can help support/not hinder when she's out fighting.

Figure 1.2 : Moodboard - appearance

Figure 1.3 : Moodboard - head gear

Figure 1.4 : Moodboard - body suit

Figure 1.5 : Moodboard - bottom ensemble

Figure 1.6: Moodboard - patterns/details and colour palette

Week 2

Before progressing with the thumbnail sketches, we have to study the characters in the existing universe to get an idea of their silhouettes. Since my character is a woman, I picked the female characters in MHA and studied their silhouettes.

Figure 2.1: Silhouette study of MHA female characters

As I was picking out a few characters for my silhouette study, I noticed that the adult characters— although unique in colour scheme and costume variation— tend to look somewhat similar to each other. Meanwhile, the younger characters/students have more distinct silhouettes, though this is probably because the main cast revolves around the students studying in a hero school.

After a brief study, I jumped into the silhouette thumbnail sketches.

 

Figure 2.2: Character silhouette - 8 thumbnail sketches

Week 3

While presenting for feedback, Miss Anis pointed out that the sketches look similar to each other, with little variation in between. I find myself agreeing with her, so I picked 4 designs (#2, #3, #6, #8) that appealed to me and further refined/add on the details.

Figure 2.3: Character silhouette - 4 thumbnail sketches (improved)

I saw improvement in my thumbnail sketches, so I proceeded to the progressive sketches. While drawing out the finer details, I made more amendments to the design to make it more unique.

Figure 2.2: Character silhouette - 4 progressive sketches

Week 4

Further into the detailed silhouette, I made more changes. I liked the design #2 (overall shape of silhouette) and #4 (wire and scuba mask motifs), so I combined them to get a better silhouette.

Figure 3.1: Detailed silhouette - initial

I was satisfied with the design and presented it for feedback. After feedback, I made a few adjustments to design and have it finalised.

Figure 3.1: Detailed silhouette - finalised

Figure 3.2: Detailed silhouette - height chart

For the turnaround study, I find it more or less easy since the character's outfit/look is relatively symmetrical. I assigned tonal values to figure how my character would appear if it was coloured. This would help when I want explore possible overall colour palettes for my character in future tasks.

Figure 3.3: Turnaround study - details

Figure 3.3: Turnaround study - silhouette

Final PDF presentation for Task 1

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FEEDBACK

Week 2

Analysis is good, but hurry with developing the moodboard so you can visualise the character you want to create.

Week 3

Current thumbnail sketches all look the same with each other. Refer to existing characters in your chosen universe and try to implement some distinctive features into your own character. Look up on scuba diving gears and other water-related equipment to make your character's costume reflect her powers

Week 4

There's an improvement on character's silhouette— the character's costume now reflects and support her powers. Remove one half of the earpiece and gauntlet on alternate sides to break the monotony.

Week 5

Good observation, nice character design. Can see how the character's design progresses to final output. The finer details of the gears and costume can be developed in Task 2.

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REFLECTIONS

I was looking forward to this module a lot, since I like creating original characters— be it for an existing universe or for one that I have in mind. Therefore, I had jumped into this assignment with a lot of enthusiasm.

The freedom for me to create my own character is a fun experience, mostly because the universe that I chose allows me to go as wild as possible. The best part of the assignment is creating my character's backstory and superpower, since I do enjoy reading and writing as a hobby. Surprisingly, I had a hard time in creating the costume design/silhouette for my character. It was hard for me to create multiple distinctive and appealing silhouettes, but with the Miss Anis' nudging and advice, I was able to create a design that I was happy with.

Overall, I found out that I tend to latch on strongly onto a specific idea, which led to little variations in my thumbnail sketches. It took me a few more referencing and being open-minded with new ideas to create the character for my assignment. TLDR; more referencing and don't latch on too much on the initial idea.