Thumbleina Week 0- Getting to go ahead

This Week I pitched my Final Major Project idea in the form of a presentation, explaining my reasoning behind wanting to do this project. In the end I got the idea approved by my tutors with some notes on making the project smaller, since as it is there are a lot of potential assets for me to be drawing (over 15 characters, 16 environments plus various props.) But the presentation served to help me answer the question "why this project?" I thought It'd be a good idea to write that down here as well.

So, why this project? 

In my previous projects (which you can see here) I've been able to design characters, but only within a limited time frame (3 weeks) I wasn't able develop them past the initial development, and I only had the time to present them in a single pose. I aim to with this project increase the complexity of my characters and produce full character sheets with turnarounds, gesture shots, expressions etc. Being able to show multiple development shots on each character sheet and work with sketches for a longer period of time is something that I've wanted to do for a while now. As much as I enjoy creating stand alone characters, I find most of the fun comes from exploring the character once the design is set.

Betty- a Previous Character

I also want to develop my environment and prop design, as as it stands I only have characters in my portfolio, and if I want to become a visual development artists I'll have to expand my designs past that. As well as myself just wanting to learn new things, environment and set design being one of them.

In addition to environments I'm going to take this opportunity to  finally learn how to colour key, and be able to tell a story through colour and light.

a monster in Paris- colour key

As for why the story of Thumbelina? 

I found that Thumbelina is  a story that hasn't been retold a lot, and isn't as well know as the other mainstream fairy tales. So I  don't need to worry about being compared to other retellings of this story. The book also has a surprisingly large cast of characters, lots of shifts in environments and various props and costume changes. So I have a lot of material to work with for this short story. Not to mention I just enjoy how this story reads.

By the end of this project I'd like to print  a small book filled with the best development drawings from this project.

More to come after the Christmas break!