Tuesday 17 February 2009

Blotty Heck

In workshop today we experimented a bit with ink-blots, to develop some new characters. Having already worked up a background story and basic concept for my character, I decided to use the ink-blot sketches to expand on my idea rather than start again from scratch.

Here in the first blot I immediately saw the ears and facial shape of some sort of canine (there's something to be said for the psychological side of ink-blots, I was certainly seeing what was on my mind). I also saw this canine wearing a pair of goggles.

In the next picture, the only part I actually changed was adding ovals around the pupils. This was clearly a sinister and foreboding carnivore, with some very interesting markings and what I decided was a bear-skin hat (complete with bear ears), ideal for those chilly winters!

Lastly, I took a different direction with this sketch and with a few alterations turned it into a silouette of a soldier figure, standing over his reflection. I also blotted another sheet of paper but I couldn't see anything interesting in it.

We were then told to take our 3 characters and sketch them interacting. I made up a scenario where the big carnivore is a general, the soldier his henchman and the goggle-wearing canine a dingo doing some welding. I should note this was a quick sketch and the characters came out way more human-like in appearance than I would prefer. Still, quite interesting that with just tiny alterations to completely randomly generated shapes they still fit into my predetermined scheme.

I will likely develop something for my character from the second blot as I like the facial markings and how the outer shapes can be interpreted as interesting items of clothing.