Head maquette

I started this maquette yesterday, trying to get a similar feeling to the simple plasteline figure's head. I developed the head further, putting in ear detail on the right hand side and some little teeth. I really like this design and hope to use this small model to help with colour tests or texture tests later on. I also want the final sculpt to have the same kind of forms as this one. The side profile is more appealing than the front at the moment so maybe this is something I might change in the sculpting process as well.

Mischevious character sketch

I drew this on Photoshop as a joke - but it actually captures a lot of the character of the Kijimuna that I want to get across in the final design. Sometimes the quickest, crappy sketches are the best! Also the pile of fish in front of him gives me an idea of how to present him at my end-of-year show...

Goblin thing

It's hard to imagine this one with a load of orange hair but I was looking at Lord of the Rings's Golem and liked the proportions and his build (or lack of it). This is a sketch of a more goblin-type face. I coloured it grey just to make it stand out from the background but Kijimuna's skin is often described as red coloured so it will not end up looking anything similar to Golem whatsoever. Also, to me, this looks a little more evil than I want this character to feel, Kijimuna often befriend humans in a lot of Okinawa's folk tales so I need to consider this in the design...

Face development

Now I've explored the shape of the body for a week, I'm focusing on it's face for most of this second week of the project. In the design maquette, the use of the Kijimuna's facial features and expression will be vital in communicating the creatures character and emotions - I want people to feel something for this character, if it's face is too alien, people will not be able to read and relate to it. To give it a more human look (without having to conform to generic face shapes too much) I have decided my version of the Kijimuna will have rounded-pupil eyes and similar teeth to that of a human.

Today I explored different facial features on a half-face mound of WED clay.
 (I use wed quite a lot for things I will be working on all day because of it's high glycerin content allowing it to stay moist for much longer than say, smooth buff. I used it for the project in my last blog: Capramostro and hope to use it for the final sculpt on this one.)
I tried to start off with a human-style face and took a front and 45 degree photo every time I changed the face significantly. Most of the changes were to the nose but the mouth, size and distance between the eyes differs also.

I'm not particularly warming to any of these variations right now but this photo evidence might be useful when I work on the face a bit more. I hope to produce a small bust maquette tomorrow based more on the simple plasteline figure posted earlier on.

Liquifying a design

Just getting used to some stuff in Photoshop like the liquify tool - the image above was a quick test I did. No. 1 is the original drawing and the other three are variations created using this tool. No. 3 is my favourite, the others just look distorted. The idea of having the eyes quite far apart is quite appealing so I might come back to this later...

Monkey face - in colour

First sketch I've coloured, thought I'd try a more ape-like face, but I don't want it to look too much like an existing creature and the nose is different than other ones I've looked at. I don't particularly like this one - I want the side profile to be more human than this.

WED clay sketching

This weekend I got some clay out and did a larger version of the plasteline maquette I did during the week but in a more crouched stance. I changed it a couple of times to see how little things about the pose can affect the feeling of the character. As I went along I couldn't help but block out muscles and tendons etc. I think having longer arms works quite well, especially taking into account that Kijimuna live in trees similar to a lot of primates who have lengthened arms...

Plasteline Sketch

This was my first dip into 3D designing - this was just to get an idea for how long I wanted the arms and legs to be etc... For this a used a very soft plasteline we had in stock at uni - its the same colour and softness as one of Jacobson's stuff that comes in a tube. I found I could work quickly with this before getting my hands covered in clay later on! This figure will probably end up being used as a 'pose' maquette to help me decide what position the final model will be in... The face was done quickly with a pencil and a bolt before I took any photos, but just from this, you can start to see the Kijimuna's character coming through.

First sketch (using guidelines)

Still getting used to the graphics tablet - this is a sketch I did over some proportion guidelines, at this point I haven't worked out what I want to do with the hands, feet or face - of course the hair will change the look of it quite a bit and I'm not sure what hair would be best but I included it anyway. I'm not too keen on the proportions, I think if the Kijimuna is also called 'bungaya' which means 'large-headed' then it should have a large head compared to it's body...

Later sketches will be influenced much more by things in nature that share this creature's environment and characteristics and I hope to take reference from books and the internet so the design is believable.

I e-mailed the god of creature design, Jordu Schell, today- we met at Monsterpalooza 2011 and I got to spend the day at his shop in LA repairing some of his old maquettes and chatting rubbish. I thought he could give me some pointers on designing a creature effectively, as he makes a living from this and holds courses on creature design on an international scale. He might not reply as he must get hundreds of e-mails a day but I thought I'd try anyway...

Pencil sketches update

I'm trying to do both manual and digital sketching, here's some more scans from sketchbook pages - this first image was two scribbles of a crouching pose and a Chinese-dragon style head, often people in manga and anime have small thin noses like Western people but I though it might look quite cool to give it a more Eastern look by widening the bridge of the nose and taking inspiration from Eastern culture...

I started to look at primate features today, the shape of the hands (that help with tree-living) and the arm proportions. Longer arms look like they would work and would fit with it's environment... I need to work a lot on how that would work in 3D but we'll see...

Looking at other creatures that spend a lot of time in trees, I like the look of sloth's 'claws' that they use to hang from branches - but Kijimuna are supposed to be expert fishermen and only eat the eyes of the fish they catch, so I thought I could merge a human hand with this claw to allow it to hang from branches easily and still be able to do fiddly things with proper digits...

Quick pencil concept

I drew this quickly to get a feel of what the hair might look like from the front - it looks similar to another sketch I'm currently doing on Photoshop - I imagine this character with a more round face rather than a long pointy one so a lot of the random sketches have this look but I hope to explore more facial features etc... I like the idea of it having a lot of hair going down it's back and arms (which matches a lot of online and book descriptions), also more wispy hair on the chest might look quite good. I don't have a specific way of going about my designing at the moment but drawing definitely isn't my strong point so as well as trying to improve this, I also can't wait to see what I come up with by designing three-dimensionally.

Body shapes...

I thought I'd start by thinking about a really general body shape - what kind of silhouette do I want my design to have? Do the descriptions of Kijimuna suggest a certain body type? Well they kind of do - they are described as being the size of a small child (3-4 yrs old), but they also said to live in the trees, so later I hope to look at the proportions of primates and other animals that navigate trees so see how they differ from humans...

The rough sketches above are just brainstorming about basic body shapes, I sketched in pencil first before I received a graphics tablet for Christmas - I have very little experience with Photoshop and have never used a graphics tablet before, so using these tools for this project is going to be a steep learning curve! The second image is some of the body shapes done with a tablet plus some extra ones exploring longer ape-like arms. The last tablet sketch with the elf ears if my favourite in terms of head-to-body proportion and look. Kijimuna are also said to be elf-like, sprites etc so I might take the elf ears further later....

Project Outline

In this project I will be attempting to re-design a creature (Yokai) from Japanese/Okinawan folklore called the Kijimuna. I then want to produce this design as a 1:1 maquette, fully painted, haired and styled. In industry this type of model would have several uses; from a shot stand-in for eye-line tests and lighting to a character reference for modellers creating the CG version of the creture for the big screen.
Here is the Wikipedia page on Kijimuna for some background information.

I'll start by posting every little sketch I do up til the final design with any 3D maquettes that I produce, I'll then begin posting the making of the main piece.

This is a 12 week project that will be on display with my other 3rd yr projects at the New Blades end-of-year show at Holborn Studios, London, sometime in June.


Thank you for taking a look at this blog, if you have any questions on this project or any of my other work please e-mail me at emily-hubbard@hotmail.com.