design investigation

Design Investigationhistory of character designJapanese Character Culture.

Information taken from the book ‘Pictoplasma 2’ Written by Takashi Murakami.

Japan is well known for their character design including anime and characters like Hello Kitty. The character design date back to before the Pacific War.

Traditionally in Japan characters are born from cartoon books or games, but they saw a new way of making ‘Artificial characters’ that were only made to become a brand and sell merchandise. These characters had no relationship to any previous designs, comic books or video characters. The most famous one was ‘Hello Kitty’ from Sanrio.

Hello Kitty is now featured all around the world, on bags and pens to cars and even cigarets. This sparked a breakout of other companies do-ing the same. The characters have to survive a screening which is the reverse method of traditional character development.

Japan is now awash with characters and is said to have ‘character su-perpower’

BANDAI character research lab siad that 84% of people in Japan owned some sort of character merchandise and up to 65% of senior citizens did too!

Roots of character design came from America when their products and advertising were eaten up by post war Japan. The products and adver-tising were covered in character designs to sell their merchandise, and the Japanese people loved the novelty goods and products. It was seen as a ‘dream from over seas.’

After that it started to influence Japanese culture and characters and novelty products started to appear in their society and advertising.

Two examples that came five years after the war in 1950 and they are Marukome miso’s ‘Marukome-kun’ and Fujiya pastry company’s ‘Peko-chan’

The Japanese pushed new development with new media, which was television animation and on January 1st 1963 Osamu Tezuka aired the first black and white television animation. He then made an animation studio he called ‘Mushi Productions’ and they went on to make ground-breaking TV such as ‘Astro Boy’

With this boom in animation for TV it meant that animators were hav-ing to work over time. They were being unpaid and overworked which is still a problem today, however from this low budget production sys-tem it supported the development in animations to get them where they are today.

The animations went on to be influenced again by America, and their cartoons such as ‘Tom and Jerry’ and ‘Wacky Races’. After that in to the 1980’s character design developed into the world of video/televi-sion games an example being ‘super mario’ and as time has gone on the characters have become more and more realistic.

Design Investigationhistory of character designThe most exciting place for character design is on the internet. ‘ASCII’ art is characters created using (single-byte) characters. Again this influ-ence came from America 20 years earlier when people sent e-mails and ended them with a :)

Complex structures of these now appear two well known characters are ‘Mona’ & ‘Giko’ Cat

These characters don’t have merchandise and are made of free expres-sion, they live in an area untouchable by marketing.

Takashi Murakami then ends by saying

‘I believe that characters will continue to repeatedly transform in the future, creating new areas where new characters can live.’

The following information is taken from the magazine: Computer arts projects, issue 82

Character design has been around longer than graphic design; the cur-rent challenge is how to move the genre forward. Character design is everywhere, from packaging on the TV and supermarkets. Character design works best when used in a effective, proactive and increasing creative ways.

Character design goes all the way back to caveman drawing, and the paintings on the walls or carvings of figures and animals. They at-tempted to capture the essence and sprit of the people or animals in the paintings.

There is a massive joy as a designer seeing your character take shape and then breathing or walking. Creating characters is a relatively new discipline. Recently designers have started to advertise and promote their own companies by using their characters rather than going to peo-ple to do it for them.

Design Investigationhistory of character designThere are some massive corporate mascots. One example is the Miche-lin Man. 1895 Michelin tyre and rubber company introduced Biben-dum, a character inspired by a stack of car tyres with the nickname ‘old rubber ribs’. He has now become a iconic symbol. Another example is the Jolly Green Giant, who over the years have has a few makeovers. He was launched in 1924. He is the mascot for Minnesota Valley Can-ning Company and in 1999 it celebrated it’s 75th birthday.

Other massive characters include Mickey mouse. He came to life on November 18th 1928 in a short film called Steam Boat Willy and this was his first unveiling. Other than the stars and stripes flag, Mickey is the most recognizable symbol in America.

Character design in games is massive too. Gaming is big business and makes more money than Hollywood. Pacman was inspired by a pizza with a missing slice. 8 people worked on software and another 8 on the hardware for 15months. It launched in 1980 and sold 100,000 ma-chines. It was and still is the best selling coin operated game.

2 years later the game Donkey Kong followed, which bought to life the character Mario. At it’s height of popularly in 1991 more children in America could relate to Mario than Mickey Mouse. The games com-pany Sega then went into competition with Nintendo (the creators or Mario and Donkey Kong) and they needed to create an iconic character and Sonic the hedgehog was born.

Design Investigationtips on creating charactersJon Burgerman, whos interview i previously looked at, gave a very helpful interview in computers arts projects, issue 82 that i found ex-ceptionally helpful.

He said it is important to research and evaluate your work. To look at other work and pick it apart to see how it works. Study the characters that you see everyday and think about the successful ones and what you like about them?

To design and plan: To figure out where and what you design will end up as, this will affect your design as you will design it to the specifi-cations of what you want it to end up as. However it always starts as pencil and paper. You have to think about who your aiming this design at too. Thinking about your audience. When working with clients your audience is usually decided for you Nathan Jurevicius explains: “Com-missioned characters are usually more restrictive but no less creative. Clients have specific needs but also want me to do my ‘thing’. Usually, I’ll break down the core features and personality. For example, if the eyes are important then I’ll focus the whole design around the face, making this the key feature that stands out.”

You need to create something that has a visual impact, something different that stand out is very important. Something strong and very visual. An example is; Matt Groening the creator of the Simpsons made them yellow so when people skimmed through the channels they caught the viewer’s eye. Really experiment with the creating of your charac-ter; don’t be afraid of the rules and tips on planning your character. Try going against the way things should be and create something exciting and unexpected. Draw with anything, you don’t need fancy computer equipment.

It is best to go out and ask people what they think of your creations. Get some feedback from it and see if they can pick up on what you have been trying to create.

As well as the character you need to create a world in which it can live in. This helps to further cement believability in your creation. Also you have to make sure that everything is perfect, to question every part of your design to make sure you got it right!

Line qualities and styles can help describe your character. “Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character.” To make your character stand out you can exagger-ate its defining features, it draws the viewer into its important qualities. Can emphasise personality traits and exaggerate their character. To help emphasise the character further you can add accessories, via props or clothing. Scruffy clothing suggests a poor character and rich things like diamonds suggest a wealthy character. They can also be extensions of the characters.

“Colours can help communicate a character’s personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions.” Light colours on the other hand to the opposite, and comic book colours can give the feeling of a super hero.

Depending the end result of your character you may need to work out a 3D version. A character can completely change when going from 2D to 3D.

Looks aren’t everything and it is important to have a personality or character to your design. It needs to be an interesting personality and this can be shown either through the way you drew it or through comic trips or animations. Giving your design emotions is important too, it adds to the personality and character, and helps to communicate to the viewer. As well as the personality what can really add to the design is a back-story. This is particularly important if your character is going to be in comic or animations. It allows you to create adventures and make your character more interesting.

Design InvestigationPictoplasmaThe following information is taken from http://www.firedbydesign.com/?page_id=5532andComputers Arts Projects, Issue 82.

Pictoplasma started in 1999 and are a group of German artists that had a simple desire to catalogue of contemporary character designs and have now collected a massive body of character design artwork from around the world. It included every type of character design from Vector im-ages to wooden toys. They started off by making a website

They wanted to do this as a reaction to the wash of figures everywhere at the beginning on the centaury. They wanted to collect the highest quality work out there and catalog it. Their goal is to get rid of the commercial feel around character design and story telling and instead enjoy it for the graphical language that it is. It has now become a whole caboodlement of different platforms including books, DVD’s and festi-vals.

When it comes to collecting work they don’t care about the logic to what you do or any issues in the work, they are just interested in seeing what you did to create it and how you use the area around you. Nothing else matters except for the design. Every design that is entered is hand picked, there are no set criteria, however they admit he has a fondness for ‘reduction’. It works well just to focus on one of two eye catching features, keeping it simple. “To bring a character alive, you need to be able to vary it without losing it’s essence. So you need those distinct features which never change, no matter what, and use others to add variety.”

They say the quality of the character is not based on the tools that you use, but having a deep understand of the craft of creating characters , and with this it is becoming harder for new designers to stand out in the crowd.

There was a trend of people creating ‘cute’ characters and now people are making more detailed characters that aren’t loved straight away. Another trend is people are moving away from the computer and digital media and getting their hands dirty. Because of this it has injected a ton of visual wealth into the world character design and other types of design.

Thanks to some artists being included in the books it has meant that they have got work and gone on to do bigger things as they have been spotted in them. All the artists details are in the back on the book, and Pictoplasma charge no money for this. Instead and as they make no money buy collecting the characters, they make it all from the sales of their books. As well as books they hold festivals in Germany now too.

Design InvestigationPeskimoPeskimo is a two people David and Jodie who collaborate together to create as they described cute character design. “Our friend made an interesting comment (he wrote the little article on us in playtimes) that we are both from nice areas of England and that is why we have a gen-erally nice feel to our work with a hint of mad eccentricity to it. There’s definitely more of a madness creeping in. We’ve recently put together a portfolio and some of the work we did a year ago is sickly sweet.” Taken from http://www.vinylabuse.com/interviews/august2005.phpThey meet at Uni in Leeds and although they did different course and were unable to work together, after Uni they got a flat together and started designing t-shirts for a shop Jodie worked for. They kept the name Peskimo a secret until they needed it.

As they work as a duo they work together by first working together, David works on the character design and Jodie works on the back-grounds and composition, it is a democratic process and there are lots of discussions over details on the piece.

When asked what inspires them they said, cartoons and picking up junk at boot sales with features that they can use in their designs. Also “everyday oddities and slips of the tongue inspire the content of our artwork. We always jot down funny sayings or overheard conversations that conjure up pictures, characters and scenarios in our heads, that’s how our Croc Monsieur picture came about. Visually, we are inspired by mid-century design and illustration, especially packaging design and characters from that era.” Taken from http://www.alwaysthinkin.co.uk/featured/interview-with-peskimo/

Looking at one of the interviews, David said that he and Jodie both had a full time job and had to do Peskimo stuff in the evenings and at week-ends. However the over all plan was to make Peskimo a full time job. This is something will ask them if they achieved that yet!

It is interesting to see that they work together well. I also went on to read that it is important to get along well with who you are working with. David said that by adding a third party to their deigning it can get very complicated to work together.

The following information is taken from a selection on the following interviews:http://www.vinylabuse.com/interviews/august2005.phpandhttp://www.alwaysthinkin.co.uk/featured/interview-with-peskimo/

Design InvestigationAcrylicana

Acrylicana is Mary Winkler and she creates a verity of work most character designs from illustrations to painting. She describes her work as ‘vivid and whimsical. It’s often child-like in theme, depicting sweets, fanciful creatures and rainbows as well as exploring the world of fash-ion and garment in illustrated form.’ Taken from http://www.acrylicana.com/about/about.html She uses a wide array of media for her work, painting on shoes, canvas and computer arts and jewellery making.

I find her work inspirational because of the fun and happy feeling you get from them. The characters are bought to life and everything is so colourful! Her work really is beautiful and I admire how far she has gone working on her own!

The following information is taken from her answers on form spring; http://www.formspring.me/acrylicana

Mary Winkler works from home but even so she has to put in full time hours up to 56-84 hours a week. Although she works for herself she still has deadlines to meet with the companies that manufacture her prod-ucts. A typical working day can be between 8am to 1am with breaks during the day. A massive downfall to this is that it is very antisocial; she described it as like being a hermit and actually having to seek out human contact.

She runs her own shop selling prints and things like necklaces and shoes, which she assembles, everything herself. However is in the process of closing this down and working with a big manufacturer. In reference to starting her own shop she said it is as simple as creating things you love and putting them out there. However you have to make sure you register your business. She also advises that you research into small business, as you need to understand the market and how it works to succeed. Its something that needs a lot of time and effort put into and wont make you a ton of money at first, but if you know what you are doing it can really take off. As far as promoting her work goes, she basically says to just post it everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, advert on blogs, online galleries, adverts in magazines business cards etc.

She uses an Intuo’s 4 tablet and a list of programs for her digital art in-cluding: alchemy, paint tool sai, Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter, Sketch-pad, and Flash.

When I asked her how important do you think it is to play with dif-ferent mediums when making your work? Or do you think it is best to stick to one and perfect it? She replied.SO very important. You need to play around with whatever ways to make a mark (literally) that you can. Crayons, markers, paint, charcoal, digital media, paper cut-outs, etc etc. Each medium can bring some-thing else to the subject matter. You’ll discover the way you respond to the challenge a change of pace presents (which is such fun — fight-ing with your materials is a lesson in itself) and you’ll know what you hate (or what hates you. If you’re asthmatic, charcoal will not be your friend). There’s no way you can spend a tiny bit of time with any me-dia, though, and expect great results. Diversify, but work on it. No easy way around it.

Talking about how she comes up with her work, she says that a lot of it is created on instinct. Sometimes she just feels as if a piece should be a vector piece or a paint piece. However this doesn’t stop her revisit-ing the pieces at a later stage to re-think them. When asked about tips for drawing she said, “Just draw. Take a pen or pencil and start with everything around you. Then everything in your head, then everything around your friends and everything in their heads.” I thought that this was a really interesting quote. I think I always think to hard about what I want to create rather than just looking around me. She says that everything around her makes her want to create and illustrate. Someone asked what aspects of her personality go into her artwork. The colour of her work is hugely effected, bright happy colours as she is a bright happy person, rosy cheeks on her girls as hers are so rosy.

Design InvestigationAcrylicanaSome of her work is quite generic i.e. Sweeties, cup cakes etc she had to get used to seeing other designs that are very similar. However her more involved work being similar to others can make her feel uncom-fortable, as it is more specific to her.

It took a while for her art to be taken seriously, it wasn’t until she went to art school, but even after than some people has their doubts. She comments though that the best way to get others to take you seriously is to take yourself seriously!

“Experience, skill, and a damn fine portfolio are what matters.” She advises that If you want to be a serious fulltime artist, then studying art is advisable. She says that you can also work while you’re in school. Learning a growing as an artist is important and higher education can help with this, however at the end of the day it all depends if it is right for you!

She was kind enough to answer the questions that I sent her.

1. How important do you think it is to play with different mediums when making your work? Or do you think it is best to stick to one and perfect it?

SO very important. You need to play around with whatever ways to make a mark (literally) that you can. Crayons, markers, paint, charcoal, digital media, paper cut-outs, etc etc. Each medium can bring some-thing else to the subject matter. You’ll discover the way you respond to the challenege a change of pace presents (which is such fun — fight-ing with your materials is a lesson in itself) and you’ll know what you hate (or what hates you. If you’re asthmatic, charcoal will not be your friend). There’s no way you can spend a tiny bit of time with any me-dia, though, and expect great results. Diversify, but work on it. No easy way around it.

2. Do you ever lose inspiration and motivation? And if so what do you do to over come it?

Of course! I’m not sure there’s anyone that doesn’t get burnt out. I take a break, if I can. Or just work on bookeeping for a bit. Being a working artist can feel a bit like being an organge. You get all this time to grow and ripen, but once picked, people just want to juice that creativity out of you. Some people wind up positively ruined from it, while others learn how to fill themselves back up. There’s no single way that works. It’s just really important to say “HEY! I’M FRESH OUT, COME BACK LATER!” (if you can — sometimes you just have to keep push-ing through due to deadlines or the need to generate work to bring in more clients).

3. Do you try and stick to one style of drawing, or do you like to try and expand your style?

Always expanding, always growing. Anything I create, I don’t see it as “this is my style..my singular styel..” it’s just what comes out natu-rally. I think the worst things I’ve created have been a result of gunning after a specific “look”. Much like fashion, trying to hard is unbecom-ing. It feels fake. It’s noticable. Dance like no one’s looking. Create like no one’s looking. As if no one will ever judge you. It’s freeing. It’s the truest form of art you can create. If you want to grow as an art-ist, don’t worry about what’s going to sell or impress strangers. Worry about what will get you to the next skill level. What will it take to paint people or skin that looks life-like and filled with fabulous colour but practice and discovering how you perceieve skin tone, people, and col-our. Will your studies necessarily sell prints or coffee mugs? Probably not. Will it lead to you being able to create larger worlds later? Yes. Absolutely.

It’s quite like any other skillset. You need to figure out where you want the road to go rather than where you think others want it to be.

4. Was it hard to get people to take your work seriously?

It was difficult to get others to take my career seriously. I think people, friends, family, etc, understood a bit better once I enrolled in art school and once I was booking jobs frequently enough to pay my bills and fill out an insane amount of forms when doing taxes. It’s always im-pressive to be doing the long tax forms and have a ton of spreadsheets allocating information from the year. People respond to numbers, data, whatever. So often you have to really press your title and client list for others to understand that when you say “I’m a working artist…I’m an illustrator..I’m a creative director” that it’s not some flight of fancy.

Design InvestigationAcrylicana5. Have you found a certain way that works best to promote your work? Do you have any advice on promoting your work?

I have found many ways of promotion that seem to work for a short time. Then it’s time to shuffle the cards again and redeal. Having an online portfolio gets eyes on your work. Constantly updating, interact-ing socially in communities and through networking websites helps. timing seems to be everything too. If your work falls along a current trend, you’d best hope you popped in early enough that it’s not a worn-out path. Having an online shop is its own mess of difficulty. What sort of advertising, whether paid or not, that works changes constantly. Analyzing website/shop/blog hits, seeing what others are favouriting/hearting on websites like deviantart, tumblr, etc can be helpful, but it’s only indicative of what’s hot now and what’s on its way out. Much like any creative endeavor, knowing what’s on the horizon is the most important point, which can be difficult when you just want to express yourself with your work and your unique worldview. figuring out how to balance your expression with what is aesthetically pleasing with the masses is one hell of a game. Everyone in the industry(entertainment, fashion, all media) are playing it, and everyone thinks they’ve got it figured out.

6. And finally, what do you think a new designer needs to have to make it in this industry?

You’ve got to be able t otake criticism in stride. While your work is a huge part of you, changing gears, swallowing any pride you may have when it comes to working with clients, and being OK with the changes you need to make to a piece are very important. It’s also important to know what you don’t want to do: Being spineless, undercutting other artists just to make a few pennies, deliberately copyingothers — these are terrible things for any industry, and they’ll surely get you black-listed amongst others, ruining your career before it starts. I don’t know how many people I’ve seen that got on the scene around the same time I did simply undo their path to success by taking the low road and hav-ing very little sense of self or respect for others. So many don’t seem to care, though, and their “work” populates websites like http://www.youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com.Hopefully some of that makes sense or is helpful. It’s a weird game, as there’s no single, simple path to whatever your goal may be. The game changes heavily if you work for a company, as you’re no longer representing yourself, but your employer. Every day there’s some new cmoplication, issue, or breakthrough that just ads to the story of what-ever a creative career can be.Best of luck! :) It’s one hell of a ride.- Mary

Having her answer the questions that were really bothering me has been really insightful. I’ve learnt that basically if your have the drive and motivation to put long hours in and a heck of a lot of effort then you can get your work out there and recognized. The way she creates her own stuff and sells it is something that really appeals to me, although I was unaware that I would have to research into small businesses and register my business, so that was exceptionally helpful.

I also love the ways she works with so many different media’s, that is something I have always felt a little lazy about. I just wanted to become amazing on the computer, but now I’m feeling excited about trying my hand new ways of creating things!

I am differently shocked the amount of time and work she puts into her business, but you can see that the outcome is well worth it! I feel that by talking to a smaller designer, it has given me more of a level conver-sation with her. I can see myself being where she is, rather than looking up at massive companies that are huge and feeling small and finding that too daunting!

Design Investigationsquink!Squink is an artist and illstrator from a small town near Sheffield called Chris Booker. Mainly one man, he creates beautiful character designs. I’ve been a fan of Squink! for some time now. I prefer his older stuff that was more ‘cute’ and fluffy looking, but even looking at his current work, which is darker I admire that talent and the beauty of his work! I think he has an amazing way of creating characters, original and I feel that most of them have be thoroughly bought to life! Although he isn’t a massive artist and most people haven’t heard of him, I’m interested how he does work considering what a small designer he is at the mo-ment.

The following information is taken from an interview taken from here: http://nowthenmagazine.com/issue-36/squink/By Matt Jones.

When Chris, the creator of Sqink! starts his pieces it is rarely planned out. Instead he chooses a colour and background and then just goes with whatever his mind comes up with. His thoughts and feelings go into his work, making the piece of work a result of the moment. It is a scary though that his work could be ruined at any moment, however this keeps things exciting.

His inspiration comes from all around him; “Recently I’ve been really into the way things around us have been transformed with the addition of concrete structures to a once completely organic landscape.” Geo-metric shapes in nature interest him, hence why there are a lot of vines, trees and antler shapes in his work. As well as all that’s around him he was interested in the way Japanese work, worked its way over here.

His work is now less controlled from when he started out. He left col-lege and applied graphic techniques and elements to all his work. Then he started to throw the rules aside, which took a while to get used to the lack of boundaries. But now he creates what he wants, and this is what he loves most about what he does. Commissioned work means some of these boundaries have to come back into play, but he knows after he can go back to creating what he wants.

Originally his characters were happy cheery character, but he started to look behind the scenes of all the characters around him and give them a dark twist. Perhaps closed doors they are miserable, devoiced and suicidal alcoholics?

He says that it isn’t easy making money, for him it’s more about ex-pressing himself and the enjoyment he gets from it. He gives the tip of being good to everyone you know, so when you don’t have any money they’ll feed you and let you sleep on their floor.

In art today he dislikes people that are doing it because it’s ‘cool’, peo-ple who’s hearts aren’t in it. However he loves inventions, and seeing characters come straight from an artist’s head, he described it as like looking through a window into someone else’s mind.

And finally he gave the advise of “Do what you want to do, not what you think people want you to do.”

Design Investigationsquink!Squink! was kind enough to answer the questions that I e-mailed to him.

How important do you think it is to play with different mediums when making your work? Or do you think it is best to stick to one and perfect it?

I think it’s a lot of fun to play with different mediums, but not absolute-ly necessary, it’s nice to move on and try something new after a while but it’s also possibly damaging to jump around between different me-dium when you haven’t mastered one, I think a lot of artists have one they keep returning to so I guess it’s better to focus more time on one (of your choice) than others, but experiment from time to time until you feel comfortable moving onto something new. I work mainly in acrylics but am looking forward to trying oils at some point.

Do you ever lose inspiration and motivation? And if so what do you do to over come it?

All the time, I think it’s just part of doing what we do, as annoying as it is. I can go for weeks where nothing seems to go right and I just want to burn my brushes and go and clean toilets in Mcdonalds for 9p an hour, but it usually comes back.. I think sometimes just getting away from it for a while is the best way, stop doing it until you crave the outlet again.

Do you try and stick to one style of drawing, or do you like to try and expand your style?

I don’t think I purposely try hard to expand my style, it’s just a con-stantly developing thing. It can get boring if you’re just churning out the same thing over and over but at the same time when you’re releas-ing things commercially there’s always the danger of alienating fans if you’re producing things that aren’t what they expected. Hopefully doing that means picking up a few new ones though and perhaps the old ones will return..

Was it hard to get people to take your work seriously?

Still is, the vinyl scene is still relatively small in the UK, most of the attention I get comes from the USA and Italy, and finding initial suc-cess in that area means it’s much harder to sell other types of work such as canvas because the toy collectors tend to just want customs to sit on their shelf rather than to go on the wall. I think because I do so much work on toys as a platform, unless people realise what a big market there is for it, it doesn’t look much different to painting things from Games Workshop, and it’s really hard to convince people otherwise.

Have you found a certain way that works best to promote your work? Do you have any advice on promoting your work?

I think Twitter has proved a huge tool in promoting my work, Face-book too.. I’m not a huge fan of it to be honest. It’s hard to promote work without sounding totally arrogant at times, so finding a balance is essential. People love to see progress pictures and to know how you work, I think it helps them to feel more involved in the process and gives them something to relate to. So, do that if you can

And finally, what do you think a new designer needs to have to make it in this industry?

A LOT of patience.

Best Regards,Chris Booker – Art Director/Creator of Otherworldly Beings.

Its interesting to find out that he doesn’t plan his work before he starts. This goes against everything that I have been learning to while study-ing. Although he did go on to say that, that was also a problem to stop conforming to what he learn at college and just to do what he wants.

His answers were very interesting, and I found them helpful. Unlike all the other people I have looked at, he said it was overly important to try lots of mediums and focus on just a few instead. He seems quite relaxed and just seems to sort of go with the flow when he is creating, not mak-ing much of an effort to expand his styles or anything. Instead he just lets it come naturally and in the end, it ended with his styles expanding.

The promoting your work question also caught my eye. Just to try and get your work on all different social websites, he also mentions about feeling like he sounds arrogant, this is something I’ve feared when showing work on these sites. However I thought it was helpful to know to find a balance and people actually enjoy seeing your work in process.

Design InvestigationCharacter Assassination - in the industryThis information is taken from a piece written by Philip Hunt from Studio aka.

“Character animation provides advertisers away to impart messages with an apparent humanity that wears it’s heart if not on it’s sleeve, than at least in it’s back pocket.” Character design is adding a personality, representation that the viewer can recognise.

There are no real secrets to what makes a good design, it is just that some designs work and some don’t.

The designs that works best are the ones that get your interested and pull you in, the ones that do something different and opposite.Whether it is print, broadcasting, online or in toys, the difficulties in the designs still stay the same.

“sometimes the best solution to a problem is to avoid the apparent solu-tion at all cost.” I see this as thinking outside the box, to sit down and rethink your ideas. Not to do what is obvious!

Studio aka’s failed designs were to do with the fact that the clients were unable to get the message, even though the designs were good.

“Perversely, artistry, originality and creativity have never been so in demand” If you have these skills you will be able to create something good.

We as humans have a desire to add meaning and association to things. To give things personalities and life, which comes from what the com-mercial world created via advertising, publishing and broadcasting.Studio aka’s methods are more about the graphical language, using this as a tool to engaged with the audience. They are so much about classi-cal views on anatomy, pose and expression. Characters are designed to be shown to certain audiences. ie. there are certain characters made for children and cretin ones designed for adults.

Better to work with your own characters as when you work other peo-ples you lose the freedom. With your own designs you thought about everything you put into it and the reasoning behind it!

Advertising communicates with humans, but most of the message is subliminal, and this is what makes character design work, taking us on an alternative reality and creating a relationship with the design. The brand of the design is the narrative that directs the audience.

The Internet allows the user to feel like they are in direct contact with the characters, as they are in a limitless, visual world.

In CGI they try and make the characters as lifelike as possible but Pix-ar’s John Lassiter said “the closer you seem to get to reality the further away that goal appears to be” The best work is that with a narrative, it’s the storyteller that keeps us interested.

“But however delightful, everything in these pages is yesterday and tomorrow ia the place to find yourself looking toward. meanwhile, we continue working and we aim to please.”

Design Investigationdesigning my illustrationFirst I took the advice that I got from Mary Winkler and started to just draw anything I could think of and looking at things around me. How-ever my mind came up blank. After a few drawings and a lot of staring at my page. Then I had an idea.

For a while now I’ve wanted to create an illustration on my hamsters that I have as they all have a lot of characters. So I started to come up with some ideas for hamster illustrations. I started out by looking at what main features make up the character of my hamster.

Her nose, ears, whiskers, eyes and round shaped body is what really stands out, so I based my sketchs on these facts.

Design Investigationdesigning my illustrationOnce I had finalized my sketch I put her onto the computer to make her in illustrator. I made the outlined sketch and then I messed around with colours.

I found that the darker colours didn’t work, and the lighter softer col-ours also didn’t really work. I wanted to base the design on characters from Japan, like hello kitty. They use bold black outlines, simple bold shapes and bright, bold colours usually only 1-3 different colours. So I focused on the hamster and as she was girly but with a bit of an edge and settled for a bright bold Purple colour as I felt that this was just related to her. “purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent inten-tions “ taken from Jon Burgerman. Her character is cute on the out-side, but hides somthing evil and naughty on the inside. On testing the colours for the tummy I found that cream just worked very well with it. Originally I was thinking a bright contrasting colour, but that just didn’t work.

Design Investigationmaking a toyFollowing information taken from; Computer arts projects, issue 82

From character design orientating from Japan, it didn’t take long for the character such as ‘Astro Boy’ and ‘Hello Kitty’ to be turned into bright colourful plastic toys and other merchandise. Star wars was a massive influence in the character toy market. , when it came out every cool kid had to have a Darth Vader or a Chewbacca toy and now these toys are collectables and go for massive sums of money if they are pristine and in their original packaging.

Adult toys are a massive industry, particularly popular among creative people. Kidrobot President Paul Budnitz feels that they are so poplar because ‘they are amazing, beautiful works of art.” There is also a op-posed view from Jon Burgerman (who’s interview I previously looked at) that the toys speak the language of merchandise and we are pro-grammed to get excited over this.

A new designer news something new and exciting that stand out from the crowd as some argue; the market has become very narrow and eve-rything is just copies of each other. And this is because creators of the toys are making them quicker than we can buy them. They are addict-ing to collect and look really good when all lined up together.

If you create a design that stands out, you then have to catch the atten-tion of a toy manufacturer such as Kidrobot, then get your toys into stores and distributors online and offline, and all this takes a long time and an be very expensive. This is for plastic vinyl toys

From this I have decided that I want to make my character into a plush toy. The toy will be made of soft materials and made for an adult col-lectable, not for children or for playing with. Instead it would be a col-lectable toy, bringing my design to life.

Some different ways to manufacture your product are;- Simplest way is to draw the figure from many angles and let the factory work it out.- Getting them made up in a 3D program such as Maya and send ing them to the factory- Create the sculpture yourself.

These techniques are all very long and expensive, but companies like Kidrobot create blanks that you can paint directly onto speeding up the process. There are also competitions held to show these painted toys off, where you could get recognized and you painted toy could actually end up being a toy.

Plush toys are made from fabric rather than plastic and are particularly cheap and easy to make.

Marketing your toy is very important; it’s to get it out there and sold. There are lots of different ways to market your toy. One way is to at-tend toy fairs, create a stand that’s unique and stands out to get atten-tion. However this can risky as it expensive to set up.

Design Investigationdifferent character designsAfter researching my designers I found that it is important take your work into different medias and try your hand at new experiences. I know that most the designers I looked at print, paint or make their own pieces for sale by hand, or they once did when they started. So because of this I decided to look at what else can be made from character de-sign.

I looked at the types of character design.Information from: the book ‘Pictoplasma 2’

Types of character design.

Vector

Originally when creating vector graphics people would use stencils, rulers and compasses to make the designs perfect. Computer programs today have tools that make this job easy and perfect. Characters created through vector graphics have similar design shapes and techniques or situations generated by similar computer programs.Many designers make a deliberate attempt to strip the artificial ’smooth-ness’ off images created on the computer which in turn makes these designs more artificial.

Action Figures

This toys are collectable toys for adults. Vinyl figures are ‘high tech’, they are precise, clan, usually slick and painted. They are meant to be displayed and their point is just to be owned. They are boys toys.They are designer toys based on illustrations and designs. These toys are most important in Japan, Korea and the USA.

Puppets dolls & objects

These toys are high touch, cuddly warm, more interactive and sociable. They are something we relate to as children, and re discovering them comes from Japan. Manga/Anime genre bought the young comic world and adult pop culture together.

Free hand drawing

Way of expressing in character design. the movements of hand and arm are translated directly via the selected drawing medium as well as the pressure and angle on the blotting page. This way of drawing captures spontaneous personal moods and that creates imperfect expressive, alive characters.There is also a huge variety of drawing media.

Street art

Street art is unmistakable because of the tools used to create it (roller paint, cans, markers, etc) They use Caricatures which comes from the word character. Caricatures exaggerate striking feature on a person. This technique has been made simpler but street artists as it is hard to create something accurate and often illegal to drawing on building walls. Another way to to pre make the design using paper.Taken from the book ‘Pictoplasma 2’

Puppets dolls and objects as well as the idea of toys in general appeal the most to me.

Design Investigationfriends with youBecause of my interest with making plush toys I researched into a com-pany that started by creating plush toys.

Friends with you, is a company based in Miami and was established in 2002 by Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III. They are able to cre-ate their distinct style into a wide range of mediums and applications. It spans from fine art to large-scale experiential installations and interac-tive playgrounds. The reason I was interested in them as the started off making plush toys based on character designs.

The following information is taken from two interviews:http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002810.htmlandhttp://crowndozen.com/main/archives/001407.shtml

They create fantasy worlds, and by doing so allows them to expand their realities and logical thinking. They do this to create environments and experiences for the viewer. They began to send their signal to the world via toys.

Buying the toys has a bad reputation, and it is hard for them to create a product that is made for sale, but also keeps with the escapist world theme. Because we are programmed from birth to buy things, and give the things that we buy value.

They started out by sewing unusual shapes to the floor and making things that they thought they could bring to life. They put everything together themselves at first, and even sewed their own plush toys. However after a few accidents, they now have a seamstress to do that for them.

The plush toys are quite new, and the people who like traditional toys quite liked what they had. However some weren’t sure and others didn’t agree. “Art” toys are innovative and there is a very big market for them. There however is a fine line between toys and art. Each toy comes with a back-story adding to the character. Microscopic characters enlarged to interact with humans.

They collaborate with people a lot on projects, and this is something they feel very comfortable doing. They like all other designers I have looked at enjoy working with different materials and tried their hand at working with wood.

I find this company particularly interesting as they started to hand sew their own toys made to be ‘art’ toys for adults, which is what I want to create. It is really interesting to see all the other things they have gone to create since they started out doing plush toys. They said in the inter-view that there is a massive market for these sort of toys, and the inter-view dates back to 2005 and I would have to say that there is differently a massive market now for the soft toys! This is an area that I find really exciting and I want to try my hand at something new using a new media to bring my life to work.

Design Investigationmaking my patternTo start with making my plush toy I took my original design and traced round it so I had the different parts to make a pattern. I separated it into two colours like my illustration. The white piece is the face and belly, and then there is another piece for the outside of the face in a purple colour. The back piece would just be purple. The ears would be made of a front white piece and a back purple piece.

I then had to consider the shapes of the pieces. The back piece was first, as I wanted to make it 3d at not just a flat 2d toy. So I split that back in half and added a slight curve to it.

By doing this it gives the back shape and allows me to stuff it and it can stand. Then by making the back fuller I then I had to added a base to it so it can stand.

I then got stuck straight in a cut out a paper pattern and made a paper prototype.

The paper prototype worked well. I had to make a few changes. One main was to change the shape of the back pieces. Where they were very rounded I had to change this and make it more of an upside down tear shape. By keeping the original shape at the top it meant I could join the pieces more smoothly and perfectly. After the paper prototype I could really see any other problems with the design so I tried on some scrap fabric to make a test one.

The first problem I noticed was that my pattern was too small and I needed to make it bigger as it was very small and fiddly to put together. I roughly sewed it and it didn’t take too long to put together. I just used some scrap pieces of fabric to put on some eyes and a nose. I also tested my ears on this one, which I didn’t do on the paper one.

The outside of the face and belly I kept the same shape as my original drawing.The ears were made from two pieces one white for the front and one purple for the back. This was just a really simple shape that matched my drawing.

Design Investigationmaking my patternBefore I started I had to plan out how to put it together.1. Cut out pattern.2. Sew on eyes, nose and face details to face piece.3. Sew together ears.4. Sew outside face piece onto face piece.5. Sew together two back pieces.6. Pin back piece onto front piece with the ears caught into the seam making sure it is inside out with right sides together, also leaving a gap at the bottom.7. Through the hole turn the toy inside out, or right side out.8. Stuff through hole and sew together with ladder stitch.

After doing this I expected to see something pretty scary looking when I turned it right side out. However it actually, I thought, looked pretty good for a first attempted. After this test I was pretty happy with the pattern and decided there were a few adjustments to make and to neaten it up.

I also had the problem of blowing it up and making it big enough to make easily and the prototype was also a little small for my liking. I also forgot to add a seam allowance on the test one which made it even smaller. I wanted to hand draw the pattern but I wasn’t sure how to make it larger. Instead I drew the pattern out neater with the adjust-ments I made and scanned it in. I then traced round half of each piece in illustrator and reflected it so it was symmetrical. By saving them like this I am then able to make it as large as I want or as small as I want without having to redraw and design the whole thing again.

I then had to decide what fabric to use. I decided to pick colours that matched my design; purple and cream.

I looked at some cottons and poly-cottons, but many were too thin or too rough. I then looked at fleece, which I felt with perfect straight away. It was very soft and durable and would ass a real snuggly, soft feeling to the toy.

I then looked at stitches. I decided to stick to a back stitch as after researching a bit I found that this was the strongest stitch and I am very used to doing this stitch. I also researched into the ladder stitch as I was unaware of this, and it would allow me to finish my toy of neatly.

I also bought actual eyes and nose, which are solid black circles/ovals with shanks to secure them. This gives the toy a more professional look and also means I can easily and safely secure the eyes and nose to the face. I also wanted to get something for whiskers such as a wire type thing so they stick out as that is one of the main features of the hamster design but I was unable to find anything that suited this. Instead I got some tapestry thread, which is very thick, and I thought I would have them hanging down.

Design Investigationmaking my patternI then cut the pattern out and followed my step by step I wrote when I made the test toy.

I assembled the face and added the details such as eyes, nose and whiskers. Then I carried on following the step-by-step guide.

The pattern fitted together very well and I didn’t encounter any prob-lems except one of the ears didn’t get caught in the seam, so I had to use the ladder stitch to secure it properly.

I then turned the toy right side out.

I was happy with the overall design, but I felt it was missing something. I decided to add feet to the design as it looked a bit like a head rather than a body and it would add stability to the toy as it had a habit of roll-ing forward. Also the whiskers didn’t look right so I decided to shorten them and sew them in place on the face. Although they were shorter than I wanted, they ended up standing out and being a main feature of the design like I wanted.

In the end I was very happy with the design. I think if I were to do it again I would make it less wide and a little taller. This didn’t show on the test toy, as it was so small. I think by adding feet to the design it re-ally finishes it off and the whiskers although a little wonky add charac-ter to the design.

I then changed my illustration to match my final plush toy.