Rag Dolls and Wooly Dragons

I spoke to my lecturer yesterday and we talked about the design of my character as they apperar to be too much like Dream Works and Disney, which could be a problem if I ever want to put myself out there as a independent artist. here are the most current concepts which I out sourced to someone else and we have been working to achive what I want.

Rough concepts by Gemma Roberts

During the conversation I had with my lecturer he asked me what styles/designs do I like in animation and video games, so I mentioned the video games ilomilo and Costume Quest. ilomilo is a puzzle based game which involves two stubby looking characters (ilo and milo) who are separated to meet up. The world of ilomilo is a frabric styled world, with patch-worked characters, background which look as if a child had drawn them, the block that you walk on and move around seem to be like a cross between a blocked cushion and plushed bean bags. Overall it is a very smooth, warm and soft feel to it.

The design for Costume Quest like ilomilo, it feels very child like and has style to something like a Saturday morning children's animation. I thought this might help me in coming up with some new designs for my world.

I decided I need a more stylized design so using Coustume Quest and ilomilo as my reference I then looked into children's illustrations as my film is about a little girl who no one believes her and think her story is made up, so using children illustration it seemed it would help the veiwers to think that she might be making this up after all and give me a design I can call my own. Here are some images I looked at and liked.

by Hunson Nguyen

The use of colour in this image by Hunson Hguyen is fantasic, the deep blue of flying fish gives off a warm, comfort feeling for me, the same goes the the giffars, the richness and how they have been painted in a non uniformed style makes me think of an older childs drawings.

 by Barry Rockwell

by Chad Geran

by Julie Colombet

by Julie Colombet

by Matthew Scott

by Matthew Scott

These images by Matthew Scott remind me of a cross between the Japanese studio Ghibli and ....... The flattness of colour used in the top image with all the animals having dinner  

by Unknown

by Unknown

by Yuri Norstein

by Yuri Norstein

Looking at these images gave me a sense of that I wanted to take my art direction towards that of childerns illustrions and childerns animation. fusing that with idea of ilomilo, I started to think of a frabric styled world. which got me back onto the serach of images with drag dolls and stuff dragon toys.

The green knitted dragon (above left) is how I am imaging how my dragon in the film will look, in terms of textures. The stubby arms and legs are another feature that I want to include in my design. 


For the little girl though I have been looking at rag dolls for my inspiration I am worried if making her look like that her body wouldn't look right for when she has to move. Rag dolls have very flimsy arms and legs, which wont hold up her body let alone having to hold a sword and shield. However looking at the characters from Pixar's Toy Story Series you can see that they have worked around the fact that some of the toys in real life wouldn't be able to support their weight (Dolly being a prime example.) I think I will have to study their movements for both the dragon and the little girl in my film.

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