Studio Practice: I See Faces; Week 2 (GIF Plans and Peer Feedback)

GIFs by Philippa Rice

Though my images created during the first week were indeed 'characters' I felt as though they LACKED character; I feel as though the most interesting characters are created when they have a believability to them, something only really achieved if the illustrator puts their own certainty and conviction into them. I didn't see any of my characters as real living things with quirks and personalities; they felt as two dimensional as the pages they were on.

The work of illustrator Philippa Rice did however reinvigorate me. I love their simplicity in the fact they're usually only 4-20 frames long, but how utterly believable they are. I saw these characters and wanted to know more about them, I got a sense of WHO they are not just WHAT they are. The idea of doing something three dimensional is also something I've been wanting to try out, and her artwork provided perfect inspiration.

Further character exploration//experimentation after Jon Boam workshop

I began with the intention of developing some of my earlier characters, but I felt no emotional response to really any of them, so given the openness of the brief I decided to employ what I'd learnt at the Jon Boam character workshop and draw without thinking of concept but rather character.

From these looser concepts I uncovered a little fawn character that made me FEEL SOMETHING. This was a turning point as I felt as though I'd finally created a /real/ character. Through further drawings I began to understand him and his sadness, I wanted to use gesture within my GIF to show others this.

From the shape experiments I also found myself drawn to a particular fox head that I'd created. Again what drew me to him was a sense of feeling an emotion; a believability.

Sad fawn development and GIF ideas

Papercut fawn experiments, with folds on arms and legs for movement

There were a select few characters from my initial studies however that I also considered developing further into GIFs, they were a mixture of characters picked out to be interesting when we had our crit and characters I felt emotionally excited me.