Research and Inspiration (ITAP 4)

Research and inspiration come hand in hand. I personally don’t think you can have one without the other. To do research effectively you need to find people that inspire you. If you research an artist that you don’t like you are likely not to take any ideas or techniques and use them in your own work. Also nine times out of ten you will not find someone inspirational without looking for it first through research. 

You need to always be interested in your work. Use things you like and find fun. Paul Davis quoted “Boredom is the enemy of the artist”, which is very true. If you have no passion for what you are working on, what is going to drive you on?  

At university i am doing a magazine for christmas. As an illustrator i have decided that i want to create my own character which i can use constantly through out the magazine and maybe for the ten second moving image promotional piece to promote the magazine.

Through messing about with photography and christmas decorations i found that a small nutcracker was my favourite item. Its perfect, very festive, has a story and i can try and give it personality. So how do i turn it into an illustration? I don’t want to just draw the nutcracker. I want people to look at my character and remember it. 

My own photograph. Where the nutcracker idea began

This triggered me to think of example of characters from books and movies. Pixar, Disney, dreamworks and Tim Burton where my main inspiration. As i am inspired by them i instantly started researching, looking at what different shapes and proportions they used. I then translated this into drawing different examples of what my nutcracker character could look like in their styles. Tim burton’s huge eyes and stick thin animations made my nutcracker look too scary, which makes sense as his ideas fit in with a halloween theme. This would not help me for a cheerful christmas icon. Pixar became most helpful. Pixar’s eyes are able to show many different emotions and look most realistic with both iris and pupil included and not just the pupil.

Pixar - Toy Story 

Disney - http://www.animationarchive.org/email_07_02_16.html

www.timburton.com

My sketchbook - designs for nutcracker using research

The audience for my magazine is aimed at parents, mostly mothers. The people that make christmas. So i need to make sure my nutcracker character is made for them and that it doesn’t look too childish. Maybe choose a style of drawing that parents of a certain age recognise from their childhood. Taking modern animated characters and combining them with the past. 

I asked my parents for their favourite childhood characters and programs. My answers where Bagpuss, Rainbow, Pipkins, Itsy and Bitsy, and Fraggle Rock. All these personalities were physical objects like teddy bears, hand puppets.  Whereas today most things are computer generated. 

Bagpuss

pipkins

Rainbow 

Also in my group we have decided that we want a vintage theme to our magazine. The nutcracker itself quite vintage. So by also looking at past children characters will also add to this.

Everything i have talked about in this post is an example of research and inspiration. I have took animated movies i like and used them in my own work. I have stretched my skills and challenged myself. I have found that the process involved in creating a character is much more difficult than simply creating a one off illustration.