Before I got onto designing the Farmer for Hayley and I's animation, I did some research on clothing that Farmer's wear because I noticed that there are so many different styles and colours depending on what part of the world they are from. Plus this really interested me, and made me think of our animation on a more grander scale. I learned about the typical clothing of dungarees and a checkered shirt, which keeps all the clothing tight and together, especially when farmers are outside in all conditions. However I also found out about the colonial times, and how women farmers dressed also. They wore long dresses with an apron as they did more labour jobs like milking cows and collecting the eggs. It made me think of perhaps including a farmers wife into our animation, but then made me realise that we have enough characters to make and model already, so thinking up another personality would perhaps be too much weight on our shoulders. I also found some images of Farmers from 1950's (the black and white images). I love these photographs, and even though there is no colour, you can tell that the men are farmers, through their straw hats and boots.
After considering all of these unique styles and elements, it made me think more deeply about what kind of farmer Hayley and I should produce. Our animation is set in England, but we will be covering topic of flooding and droughts, so I think dungarees would be a good suitable choice of clothing. We have both talked about wanting the animation to focus on the secondary effects of the flooding, so big boots or Wellington's will also be necessary. Overall I found out that the different outfits farmers wear, correlate to the destination of where they live, or the culture they are amongst. I am glad I learnt about this, as it has made me consider our Farmer more specifically, instead of just putting clothes and colours together. I would love to carry on doing this in the future also, as I love clothes in general!
As I know that character designing is one of my weaknesses, I began with a few sketches keeping in mind all of my research, and then went over them with fine liner. I then scanned them into Photoshop and added some quick shades, using black and white because if the design looked appealing in black and white, and the audience could tell that the character is a farmer, then like those 1950's images, the designs would be successful! I really like my middle design the best, because I felt like that one looked most natural as a farmer appeal, to me. Therefore I decided to go ahead and develop this one further with colour and a few more angles.
Since the Farmer is the only character that the camera switches back to, as the other characters only have one scene each, this is the character that I chose to do in three angles. I am quite pleased with how he turned out, especially since I am not used to drawing characters, and I am happy with his resemblance to a farmer. I tried to really focus on the hips and upwards, since from Hayley's storyboard, she has only drawn him from these angles, so I wanted the emphasis to be there. But just in case Hayley had in mind to continue the camera panning further downwards, I drew his lower body, that way when we get to modelling his character, we won't be lost on how to shape him, and we will have a reference. I think these designs will be enough to follow and craft from, as I looked at Hayley's past work and the designs she uses to mould her characters, and tried to make them similar. I did this because although I have one image in my mind of how I want the character to look, Hayley is not in my mind therefore I tried to incorporate how she processes her ideas, so that we will both be able to work together efficiently, and easily instead of clashing like we did a little bit previously.
I actually forgot to design the 'newt' character for our animation, purely because I didn't actually know what a newt was, and had left it for the bottom of my list. Once I did some research on what they look like and where they live, I thought they would be interesting to replicate, but I was really off put by their appearance because they gave me goosebumps! Because of this, I had to make my character design based off descriptions and characteristics that I learnt. For example, I learnt that newts mainly live in ponds, and are essentially harmless but can hunt other tadpoles. They also go through stages of 'metamorphosis' which is where they sprout arms and legs, in three different stages (frightening in itself). Something amazing about newts is that they can regenerate limbs if they are hurt, which is astounding because they are so small to do something so powerful. So, although they give me the chills, I impressed that they have the strength to grow back an arm if they broke it!
I did a quick character design of a newt, keeping in mind of their habitat and how camouflaged they must be to hunt others of their kind. I also tried to make my design look more bulky than in actuality, just to emphasise their strength because if you just looked at a newt like I did, you would never realise that they can regenerate limbs. I think my design looks cohesive with my other ones, and I would also like to think that crafting it out of plasticine would be fine after my planning. overall I am happy with my designs, especially as I found it to be such a challenge and finding it embarrassing asking Hayley if she thought they were okay.
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