My brother had designed a character concept for Kofi's protagonist earlier in the production phase. However, we came to the agreement that the character looked to old for the story. Kofi wanted a character that was roughly 5 years old. The character had to be slightly chubby. The character is an adorable little child that thinks he has super powers, so I thought that the character might be too big for his own shoes. That is to say he thinks he knows how the world works but is ultimately naive. When designing the character I set about by sculpting the characters head as this was the most important part of the character. It is here where the character takes shape as we can relate to the visual qualities of the subject. Kofi gave me lots of reference from various pixar films such as ratatouille and the incredibles. I also looked at real photographs of young children to fully understand their facial characteristics.
Many 5 year olds have slightly supple skin and their heads are quite large in comparison to their bodies. When sculpting the character I tried to take these points into consideration. The character himself had to be slightly stylized to fit in with the bright environment around him. When sculpting the boy's facial features I started by blocking in the eyes nose and mouth to get a better idea of the character. I started sculpting the character in zbrush for one of two reasons. The first was to really understand the boys facial characteristics and really explore his appeal. The second was purely about getting the character sorted relatively quickly. The beauty of using zbrush as conceptual tool is that you can adjust whatever it is your sculpting quite quickly. I was able to show Kofi my progress and if there were features that needed adjustment I was able to do it relatively easily. I was able to sit down with Kofi over my shoulder so he could point out areas that needed improving. This was great as I could model the character exactly as he wanted.
Here are some of the sculpts that I created using Zbrush. Using the reference material Kofi gave me I set about creating a character. I paid careful attention when creating the supple skin as well as the small stubby nose. The eyes were a huge selling point and these needed to be jst right in order to make the character appealing.
The first image was created early on in production using the reference available to me. Originally Kofi wanted the boy to have some sort of a quiff, this was abandoned however as it didn't fit the character as it made him feel to old. The first image is highly stylized but I was later told he looked to old as his skin didn't feel supple enough. With constructive criticism from various students as well as kofi's instruction I set about adjusting the characters features. For example I made the ears smaller, I brought the eyes down towards the cheeks and created a more realistic mouth for the character getting rid of the hard edges. I think the first character failed to inspire Kofi because of his elongated neck which was not befitting to a 5 year old. I tried stylizing the boy too much, but I leaned some valuable lessons in character development as well as proportion.
Zbrush allowed me to do this quickly and effectively which will hopefully speed up production time. If I had drawn the images, no matter how fantastic they would have been they would not have met the requirements in Kofi's story. His vision is paramount and Zbrush allowed me to create a character very near to what Kofi had envisioned.
I learned some very important things here not only about character proportions but also about the pipeline. Rather than doing many concepts that would have been time consuming I narrowed it down to around three which will be beneficial to Kofi's tight schedule.
The second character created in zbrush is far more suited to Kofi's story and specifications as he looks more like a naive but adorable little boy than an old man! I am ver pleaded with the way in which the character turned out, but I suppose I was more overwhelmed with the amount of constructive criticism that turned the character into what he is now. I am very grateful to all those who inspired me and taught me a few things during the characters creation.
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