Vaiva's Concept Design

Baltic Pixies general portrayal is for the creatures to be quite sexy and inviting, yet brutal and dangerously animal-like. Their long hair is tangled,  rock-nails sharp, they have massive lips and breasts,  and chicken skin underneath straw-clothing. Some of them are  beautiful, with golden or white dresses, big eyes but nonetheless have the chicken skin and legs. But the queen of their kind, Vaiva, caries  some sophistication to her, mainly in the attire,  worthy of a queen. 

Other motifs include dragonflies and amber. 

Together with the background, which is a complimentary to the dominant character design colour, green, I tried to use full spectrum of color wheel. 

In my personal opinion, the design here is not the mind-cracking one, because this project seems to ask one not: quite familiar female character, with modest moderations to suggest chicken-woman and some fancy decorative costume design. 

I’m  in the between the idea that this is PRECISELY what I needed and can move to some detailed designs of hands, head and so on, or that maybe  should loosen up and give another attempt to get some potentially more interesting designs. 

Vaiva's Costume Design Ideas

 The underlaying references for Vaiva's costum design are chicken and Dragonflies as the animals associated with Baltic Pixies. The aim is to emphasize her curvy shapes, however, she is a dangerous and in a sense villanous creature, so her roundish shapes are complimented with plenty of triangular shapes too.

 The Design should help create a feeling that this chgaracter is sophisticated, as she is a queen. Also, inviting feminity, lush sexiness and swiftness should be evident too.

Idea 1

Idea 2

Idea 3

Idea 4

Draft animatic for The Baltic Pixie

I kept the soundtrack and the visual expressiveness to the minimum to capture bare effect of storytelling. This is animatic I consider a draft one , mapping out the basics of The Baltic Pixie character animation. I've chosen Jenny Dunbar's voiceover:

choice for shots is driven by the thought , that it is a character presentation type of animated short. Therefore there is only limited amounts of other objects (such as the moon, rowan leaf, "Laumikas" ) 

There is also a shot, toward the end, where Laume speaks of her kind bringing both, the kind will and villainy, where we don't see the character at all. I though this to be a chance for the soundtrack be manipulated to its max: anchoring from left side to the right side of the speakers. However, I'm looking for a visual idea to represent the line....

I'm sure to revisit and add extra panels to break down the the action even more so soon enough it will serve as a guide for reference-shooting, that is I'd try myself to "act out"  reference material for animating.

Initial Voiceover and Design Ideas

Jenny Dunbar is a voiceover artist I am collaborating with for this project. She kindly did 7 different variations of the Baltic Pixie (laume) monologue, of which I chose three so far. However, she encouraged me to get back to her should I see some changes are needed.

And the shortened version of monologue 1 with a background music, taken from Lithuanian composer's A. Sasnauskas album 'Pixie  tales - Forest' ("Laumes Pasakos - Miskas)

Also, I have brainstormed some ideas for the character design:

These are the ones from before, for comparison:

 

So I'm starting to see least one direction her desing can be going for, I'm starting one of Vaiva's Concepts:

On a side note, here is the background sheet I'll use for documenting the Production of The Baltic Pixie:

Reference Sketches

Anatomy and Animal References

Burne Hogarth's books Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Hands are some best systematisation's of human anatomy. Sculptural drawings leave no gap for imagining the shapes in 3D. My thoughts were to study and use his interpretations of human anatomy instead of photo-realistic ones, as Hogarth's drawings follow anatomy and have this exaggeration/stylisation and well, dynamicism, which is inspiring .

A collection of some references on body parts and female body :

The other artist  is Andrew Loomis. I'm following couple of his books Figure drawing and Drawing the Head and Hands  for tips how to 'build' convincing poses, shapes . I'm already using his advice and I found it is much easier to visualize human body.

Animal references include mainly chickens , but also Dragonflies, cats as these animnals were all linked to Baltic pixie (Laume) in one way or the other. For chickens I've explored a variety of Belgium chicken breeds.

I'll give a day or to for studying references/redrawing them , as an approach for character design suggested by Iain Mccaig.

Pixie's Initial Sketching

Following Iain Mccaig's advice on Gnomon Character Design tutorial, I started initial sketches of Baltic Pixie (laume) to capture the intention(s) Next step, following his advice would be to find references of any relating subjects, copy them by redrawing and one again get back to the design with all the information gained.

So here are couple of drawings :

I feel it is only a starting point. These don’t seem to be sparking as designs, but are useful still, as I was thinking of Laume’s personality, which reflects in the posed drawings. I purposefully haven’t yet used any references, so to keep it lucid, as Iain Mccaig was offering.
Next posts will present some references and  probably more sketches

The Baltic Pixie Project Proposal

The Baltic Pixie Project Proposal

VIsual Inspiration: Style

This time it is exploration of visual style. First half of it are classical Baltic painters and the second part is a selection of  contemporary artists.


M. K. Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian painter and composer. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau.

Kazys Šimonis cubist, expressionist. Stylized, falling in many different directions and beam lines to form fantastic images. His tendency was to to divide things into geometric segments.

 
V Dobuzinskis, an urban  painter.
 

 
S. Usinskas work is exclusively sculptural. Paintings have three dimensional feel and bold composition.
 

 
 
Other references include a Selection of Contemporary artists in various disciplines, such as photography, painting and illustration.