Detailed research for every character

Research

Hello guys,

Today I will show you my research for my characters for the purpose of development and inspiration of my characters.  My research consists of American Comic books, series, games, studies, character designs, illustrations, anime and manga.  My main artist research was Joe Madureira which I had a specific post about him and his artwork.

For my witch Aura:

For Aura I looked at different characters from different Japanese games and anime including the anime by studio Trigger called "little witch academia", The popular game "The Legend of Zelda Win Walker" by Nintendo (It recently got a new game called "The Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild") and a character named Vivi in a game called Final Fantasy by Square-enix.

Let us start with the Little witch Academia Character Designs:







These character designs were made by Studio Trigger (an animation studio set in Japan).  They were made by the character designer Yoh Yohsinari in 2013 for the movie.  I chose Little Witch Academia as my inspiration for my witch because Studio Trigger has one of my favourite stylised character designs compared to other animation studios in Japan.  I always recognise their animation series because of their unique style on how the eyes, hair and outfits are drawn.  Moreover, I also chose this anime series specifically since it talks about witches and it has witch character designs which makes it a really good and useful reference for my witch for drawing the outfits and the colours that I am going to use.

All Images and Information from here

Vivi from Final Fantasy:


 

Vivi is a character in a popular Japanese Role Playing game called Final Fantasy made by the gaming company Square-enix.  His design was inspired by another Final Fantasy character from the game "The Black Mage".  I chose Vivi to be my inspiration for the 2 pets of my witch.  I was mostly inspired by Vivi's eyes since they are simple and cute looking.  Another inspiration I took from Vivi was the hat on his head since it looks witch like, it inspired me to develop my witch hat design into something unique and creative.

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The Legend of Zelda: Wind Walker is a game made by Nintendo and it is a sequel made for the console the Wii U.  I chose this specific sequel because of its cartoonish and unusual thick line work made by Shigeru Miyamoto. The main character Link is shown above in 2 different illustrations for the game artwork; I used these illustrations for inspiration for my witch clothes and making different line work since I normally work with minimal lines.

Article Link About the artwork

For Dave the Scarecrow:

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For Dave, I have researched about Scarecrow the villain from DC comics in both the New 52 edition Comics and Batman the animated series. I chose Scarecrow especially these 2 versions of it since I adore how the designs of both of them look.  The first one was a comic panel drawn by David Finch while the other picture was a screenshot from Batman the animated series.  Moreover, since I am doing a character design for my scarecrow, I thought that Scarecrow was the best character to use as a reference to my character because it is simply a scarecrow as my character.

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For more inspiration, I have looked at a character named Fiddlesticks from the popular game League of Legends.  I thought it is a good reference to my scarecrow since it is going to have ripped clothes and this will help me out to draw them as a reference.  I adore the League of Legends artwork since I like the artists usage of colours and the way they draw their characters are mostly inspired by anime characters and comic book characters but they make it into their own style.

For Dante the Demon:

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Dante was mostly inspired by anime series that were adopted from a manga comic such as: Tokyo Ghoul by Studio Pierrot and Blue Exorcist by A-1 Pictures.  The reason I chose Blue Exorcist as my style was because of how the faces and body are drawn and the main character's tail in the character deign shown above.  I though that taking a full body reference from the character design would be useful since I tend to lack human proportions.  On the other hand, the only thing that I used inspiration from Tokyo Ghouls are the eyes since I wanted my demon to look scary, weird and different from other characters.

For Reaper:

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Here I have looked at the Grim Reaper from a new game on the PlayStation 4 called Let it die.  I used this as my reference since I loved how they mixed the ordinary reaper with modern times by adding modern clothes, glasses and a golf like scythe which makes it unique and creative. I took this characters clothes as a reference for my reaper. 

 

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This is Leonardo Da Vinci's Skeleton and skull study.  I chose this study for my reaper as a reference to have a grasp of how to draw the skeleton and skull.  I think that Leonardo is the best and is the most reliable reference for studying the human body,

For the Exorcist:

 

   For my Exorcist I was inspired by John Constantine both the TV series and the Comic book series since he is an exorcist himself and I thought that it would be a great idea to have him as a reference to my exorcist character.  Moreover , I looked at artists like Aco and Jim Lee which both worked for DC Comics to study their American Comics art style since this style has different line work, proportions and style from what I draw.

I think making the exorcist and the reaper will be the most challenging part of this major project since I am going to be drawing in a different style.
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Development of the Anime Style

How Anime Art Has Changed

Hello guys,

Today I have found a useful article written by Kotaku about how anime has changed its style from the past till now.  I found this article really useful to show and prove that anime characters do not look the same and every artist has his or her style in drawing the characters.  

 

As you can see here, this picture shows how anime has developed through the years of animating different series.  Anime studios tend to adopt manga comics such as: how the dragon ball manga created by Akira Toriyama was adopted by an anime studio under the name of Toei Animation.  By adopting the series the studio follows the art style of the manga artist and the story of it.  I will talk about the development in detail down.

To add to that, the difference between manga and anime is that manga are comics and anime are animated series.

Here, there is a big and obvious difference by the ordinary anime style difference between the 90's and the 10's such as: 

1) the eyes are drawn differently (Pupils and eye line are different).

2) the line work had some thick lines to add some depth to the character while in the present time the line work is simpler without adding thickness.

3) the hair and the the face became less wavy and smoother.  Eyebrows became thinner too.

The new Anime style does not look like the style of the 90's one because it has developed and both new fashion and styles have been adopted to the 10's version.  For myself I prefer the newer version of how anime is drawn since I prefer it as a style more than the old one although I grew up watching the anime with the 90's style. 

Here is a photo of how anime has developed through its decades of airing on television.  Please note that these are not the only anime styles out there since every studio has his own style of drawing the characters in the present time.  I will talk about that more when I want to show my inspiration and research for my other characters.  

Anime has the same genres as the manga since anime is an animated series adopted to from a manga.

1) Shonen (Aimed for teens that are boys) (Action, Comedy and more)

This picture includes popular anime series from the shonen manga magazines such as: Hunter X Hunter, Hajime no Ippo, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Gintama, Reborn, Fairy Tail and D.Grayman.

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This series is called One Punch Man, it is currently a new animated series that aired in 2016 and was a huge success and the  manga was a huge success too and sold millions of copies worldwide.

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This anime is called Reborn! and it is quite an old series and unfortuently the manga ended too but I chose it since it holds a special place in my heart.

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These are Examples of different series of anime that includes popular manga series that has been adopted to an anime done by different artists and studios including: Studio Pierrott, studio Madhouse and Toei animation, studio Artland, studio Bones....etc which are all popular animation studios in Japan that produce a high quality of animation and entertainment for their fans. 

Shonen can also talk about sports such as:

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this series is about volleyball and many people watch it including me.  You might be surprised but it is really entertaining and inspiring!

2) Shojo (Aimed for teens that are girls) ( Romance, Maybe action and drama)

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These are examples of shoujo anime that take more of a dramatic and a romance approach than shonen anime.  Anime studios like the ones in the shonen part can make these into anime since they can adopt the manga and make it into a series because it is not like manga and studios look at different publishing magazines for adopting manga.

3) Seinin (Animed for adult men) (Action, gore, violence, politics...etc)

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I am going to talk about one series here which is called Darker Than Black.  Darker Than Black was made by Studio Bones and it was an original which means that it was originally made by the studio and it did adopt story or characters from other manga.  This show's audience are adults since it has mature and action scenes not suitable for children.  This studio is known to make different genres of anime and they are known too to make remarkable and creative original anime. They were also responsible of making one of the most popular Shonen manga and anime in the history of Japan Fullmetal Alchemist.  

Cover Page Of the Fullmetal Alchemist Anime

4) Josei (Aimed for Women) (Romance, heavy drama, slow paced)

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Although this anime is not aimed for me, I have watched it but it was really amazing since it shows life difficulties and how the characters live with it and solves it together which builds development.  This type of anime is aimed for women in Japan since it is less action packed and fast paced like other anime.

5) Kodomo (Aimed for Kids) (Comedy, kids)

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 There are the anime such as: Doraemon and Pokemon that are aimed for kids and are kid friendly without any scenes to harm children's thinking.  

  Lastly, Anime series can be an original story made by the studio and can be a novel or a movie adoption too.  They also draw with different styles like mentioned above since they adopt mangas, novels and movies from different magazines that have different genres.  You can see the difference of style in how the eyes change and how every single art for an anime is different unless its an original or a novel adaption since the anime studio adopts to their style.

Link to the article:

http://kotaku.com/how-anime-art-has-changed-an-explainer-1656750480

Useful Moodboards

Additional research Moodboard

Hello Guys, 

Today I uploaded research about my main artist research Joe Madureira.  Main research alone is not enough so I will make a Moodboard that has all the inspiration I need from my project including series, movies, artwork, manga, comics and games. 

 I made 2 moodboards for my major project to get inspired by; I got inspired from series including Constantine, Tokyo Ghoul and Billy and Mandy.  Moreover, I got inspired by games such as: Destiny and Let it die.  Lastly I got inspired by American comic books including the Green Arrow, Constantine and Scarecrow. These moodbaords were made using Picmonkey.

If you wanna check out Picmoneky just press the Picmonkey word on top.

I think that choosing these artists, series and games can assist me with my major project since I will be taking references and learning from them.  

 Here are the links to all the pictures I have found for my moodboards, I put them into a picture because It looked horrible when I tried putting them on the post by copy and paste. 

Joe Madureira (Main Artist Research)

Artist Research Major Project #2 

Joe Madureira 

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Joe Madureira is a Comic book artist that worked for Comic companies including Marvel comics.  Moreover, he is also popular for working on the AAA video game franchise ''Darksiders 1 & 2''.  

He is also currently working on a game inspired by JRPG ''Japanese Role Playing games'' called Battle Chasers in a company called Airship Syndicate.

I found about Joe Madureira when I was looking at art books in the DMU library and I stumbled upon his art book "The Art of Darksiders 2" but unfortunately after having it for a little amount of time, I returned it back and I never saw it again.  It seems some other student took it and did not return it back till now.

Buy the book

Check it out!

 

Airship Syndicate                       Battle Chasers

Here you can see the logo of the game studio that is making the game Battle Chasers.  I chose this specific concept art for the game because Joe managed to show all the characters of the game in a wonderful composition where he put the main heroes to the left while the monsters on the right side to show that they are fighting against each other.


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Although I have other things that I am inspired by to make my major project '' The Horror Farm'',  Joe's artwork and concept art is my main inspiration.  I managed to find Joe on the internet while I was doing research for my first term major project and I got really inspired by his work since his artwork is unique.  I think his artwork is unique because the way he draws the monsters and characters feels and looks different from other artwork I have seen in my whole days of researching other artists.

The first artwork ''Devil Hunter'' is one of the things that inspired me to add to my horror farm a grim reaper or a hunter with a crossbow character design since it will be a nice addition to my horror farm world. My main inspiration to this character is the mask because it looks a bit like a skull and the hoodie that he wears since grim reapers also wear hoodie capes.  I am still thinking of making a character design between these 2 ideas.



Concept art

I got inspired from this concept art since it is horror like with its colours so  I think I will be heavily inspired by Joe's concept art for my major project the Horror Farm.

Darksiders Artwork:

 

 These  are more artworks done by Joe using different media for further inspiration for my project.  The reason I chose Joe as my artists research is because of his unique style by mixing the western art style with the Japanese and Asian art style.  It is unique since you can't find many artists having their own style and doing what Joe does.  He inspires me too since I am aiming to become a character designer in the future for games or animation series.





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I researched more for Joe's artwork and I managed to find this artwork which I think is my current favourite since it has unusual face designs that will help me out in creating my hunter and scarecrow character designs! In the end I think I will add both the hunter and the grim reaper to the horror farm because I think they are both great ideas for this project.