Author: Star Mishra

Following the character design workshop, I did some studies incorporating shape into my character designs. 

I found that rounder shapes like circles and ovals came to me more naturally while designing, while more angular shapes like triangles were harder for me to work with. 

After the initial study, I chose my favourite design (the circular one) and refined it further. I decided I wanted the character concept to be a girl made out of bubbles, who has to be careful not to get too close to people or she will pop. This was just a scrap character for this exercise, but I hope to develop her further in the future.

I attended the character design workshop in February, where I was able to learn a lot of important pointers about strengthening character designs and paying close attention to important features like character silhouettes when finalising their design. 

The workshop began with an exercise where we were all given a piece of paper with random shapes, and instructed to turn them into characters within a time limit. I found this extremely stressful, and could only get about 3 characters made. Next, we were instructed to take these characters and develop them a bit further. This process kept repeating until only one developed character was left. After that, the third task given to us was to take that character and one of the original characters, and adapt them to fit specific dynamics. The one I went with was Wizard and Familliar. 

This workshop helped me better understand the fundamentals of character design, and helped me to improve the existing designs I was working on at the time as a result. I ended up using the final outcome sketch from this workshop in my final piece, as I carved a lino block of it that I used in my prints.

After listening to the Alumni Stories talk by Jasmine Foo, I decided to incorporate crochet into my own work. I freehanded a basic amigurumi doll body, and freehanded a dress for it based on an old dress I wore as a toddler. 

I found this to be extremely challenging, as it was my first time freehanding a pattern this complex. However, I was extremely satisfied with the end result. 

While I did not end up incorporating this doll into my final installation due to limited space, it was definitely worth making her as I was able to better my crochet skills a lot in doing so.

KNOWLEDGE + PROCESS: ALUMNI STORIES

I attended a talk by Jasmine Foo as part of the Alumni Stories session. I was extremely inspired by her crochet work, especially her use of crochet to ultimately create an animation. While she uses tapestry crochet, I wanted to see if I could bring some amigurumi into my work. I found her advice on the project extremely helpful, and a good push for me to develop my work further.

In Bangalore, I was lucky enough to visit The Museum of Art & Photography, where I saw some pieces from the body of work “We dont end at our edges” by Ravikumar Kashi, a Bangalore based artist and educator, centered around language and identity. He uses paper pulp to form letters of the Kannada script, generating the lattice sculptures in the photos here. I found this work to be extremely meaningful to me, as I wanted to work with paper to an extent as well, for a small installation. I also resonated with the themes of the work- language plays an important role in my identity, and I found it an interesting way to present this issue in such a way. I was inspired by this work to also consider working with more color with my lino than I had initially considered.

Deconstructing Venus, 

M Shanthamani

A big influence to my work was the variety of street murals a I saw while visiting family in Mumbai. 

I was especially drawn to the mosaic murals on the stairs leading to Mount Mary church- The use of color and shape to form stylized image with mosaic appealed to me visually, and made me want to incorporate a similar look in my own practice.

At this point I no longer felt like a visual novel would work for what I wanted to make, and so was debating how to make my work in a more analogue way. After seeing these murals, I decided that I wanted to work with some kind of print- though I wasn’t sure which kind. 

The detailed lines in these murals really stood out to me- I wanted to include them in my work no matter the medium I went with. In the end, I settled on working with Lino, but carved it in a way that I would still maintain the linework used in my art to resemble the detailed textures in the murals here.

Next, I  began to do some experiments while working in a more analogue setting, (with some digital experimentation as well) – playing more with different mediums and styles- digital, mixed media, watercolor/gouache and markers were the main mediums I played with, both individually and combined.

I found that I enjoyed working with a combination of paint and markers best, as this was the closest I could get to simulating my digital art style traditionally.

I paid close attention to color and lighting, as I wanted to get a better grasp of this so that I could create engaging and visually pleasing cgs for the visual novel that I was working towards making at the time.

These experiments also helped me a lot with my work when I decided to switch to working with lino in a more traditional way, as they allowed for me to translate my designs into an analogue setting in an effective way.

Next, I moved on to my own characters. I tried 3 different styles for this, as I wanted to see how their design would translate across these styles. I did attempt the style I was developing with the art I made of my peers’ characters, but found that I liked a more graphic and cartoony style better for my own designs.

I found that by working with a more simplified style, I could consider silhouette and basic expression + detail better while generating strong designs for them, which I could not do with the more detailed and paint-like style, as I got too hung up perfecting the smaller details without considering the design as a whole.

Next, I started drawing characters designed by my peers to better develop the artstyle I wanted to work with for my game. I worked with a style similar to that of The House in Fata Morgana, but with more cartoonish elements. 

I tried to work with a diverse set of designs, to really test how well I could develop and execute this style. 

I found this to be an interesting activity, which was definitely aided by the studies I did from When They Cry and Fata Morgana.

Personally I think they still need to be further developed, as they don’t look as polished as I would have liked them to be up close.

Though only briefly, as I found that I didn’t enjoy working in the style of this visual novel much, I looked into the visual novel ‘The House In Fata Morgana’ developed by Novetacle. 

Fatamoru is a gothic horror visual novel, with a fitting artstyle and UI design. I enjoyed that at certain points of the story you cannot use the backlog because the lines of a certain character are censored due to a story related reason. I could only do 1 study of the style as I was beginning to gravitate towards designing my own  characters. 

This time, I drew one of my own characters in the style rather than trying to copy 1:1 as I found this helped me better understand the techniques used by the original artist.