Born to be a Butterfly

Butterfly

Just watched the channel 4 documentary on Damien Hirst and the combination of his work on butterflies and dot pieces really tied in with what I have gone for in this design.

This design is a no nonsense simple design. I want the shapes and contrasting colours to speak for themselves.

I began with the usual circle shapes and tried to play with tonality with the dark shades of grey.

I then added dots. In a no symmetrical way, and each having a 3d roundness to them. Popping out like spots on a teenagers face.

I wanted for its style and design to show from its horizontal. It needed to look flat and plain from the front on and then it comes to life in the three dimension. I took the circles and turned all of them minus the body into semi circles. Almost looking like an African drum.

Caterpillar Design

For the caterpillar I began by playing with shapes.  Before deciding on limiting my project to spheres I looked at different shapes and silhouettes with which to construct the caterpillars shape.

For the neck I wanted to take the shape from the rings of the tribal women. The shape at the begging was looking very disconnected. I then took influence from perfume bottles which had a certain curve and shape to them.

 

 

I liked this staggered look to the neck shape and turn the curves into a contrasting rectangle shapes. I feel this could be animated in a jurky way.

 

All the way through I kept telling myself to go back, to take bits away and keep it simplistic bold and strong in silhouette. This way of under complicating my design makes it really have a distinctive shape and personality.

 

For the Kanga effect on the body I sketched the patterns with children's wax crayons. I then took this into Photoshop and added it to the body.

I decided to give the caterpillar a walking stick just like the members of the maasai tribe. A simple stick gives him so much character, ages him which I wanted to do to make this caterpillar seem like its coming to the end of its life. For the texture I wanted a combination of shiny metallic and inorganic layered over this dirty sketchy colour. I didn't want to make him look a living caterpillar but much more like a toy.

With this final design I want to animate the movement of the character in a creative way. The individual balls spinning in their own timing. Almost like an animation of DNA spinning.

Head Development

For the head I wanted it to be very simple but to have a tribal characteristic to it. I began by rough sketching ideas and thoughts. I also felt the caterpillar also needed an aged look, to make him seem to be getting old and being born again as a youthful butterfly.

I took this idea into Photoshop and used blocked out circles to begin creating a design.

The images above had a certain horror movie look and didnt have the personality I was going for so I want back and took away to the swirls on the cheeks and added some tribal dots.

The character will be reborn as a youthful butterfly. I want the personality of the caterpillar to come across in the animation. For it to be masculine and contrasting with the butterflies femininity

Texture

TO gather an idea for texture and colour. I scribbled patterns and shapes with crayons on a piece of paper. I will layer some of these shapes onto my Texture Maps. Might just be doodles but I have tried to keep them African along with just being childs play.

 

Tree Concept Art

Catterpiller Design

For this piece I just wanted to make the catterpiller in photoshop out of simple circles.

Character 3d Concept

To help develop my caterpillar character I played with some spheres in Maya just to get a general shape.

Concept Art 1 – Cocoon

Butterfly Farm Stratford Footage

Heres the footage I gathered from the butterfly farm. Just some great reference for how they move.

Animation + Camera Ideas

I feel the animation would be great to start as a circle with the camera about the tree. Then panning down to the side of the tree zooming into the egg. Each time there is a transformation the camera zooms out and spins around the tree and zooms back. I want the whole animation to be a circle around the tree.

Circles

During my tutorial on Friday with Alan we discussed using Circles as the backbone to the project. Everything is broken down into circles thus making the project simple to produce but allowing stylistic freedom. Alan showed me this tin tin animation which was just based around a sphere.

I found this animation which is similar, I’m unsure if its the same guy but either its pretty damn good.

BBC KNOWLEDGE 60 from iamrader on Vimeo.

I love the simplistic combination of shapes and soundscape in this short. It demonstrates how the simplest things can be the most effective.

Lexus - Shapes from Jack Maguire on Vimeo.

 

Michael Fakesch - 7 Disco ft. High Priest from Michael Titze on Vimeo.

Sonar from Renaud Hallée on Vimeo.

Background Designs

Butterfly Farm Stratford Upon Avon

I made a visit to Stratford Upon Avon on Sunday and swung by the butterfly farm. It was a large green house packed with butterflies.

There were butterflies from all over the world. The were all free to touch and hold. So many patterns and colours to reference.

There was a Emerging Cage where all the cocoons were kept, It showed all the different stages of the Metamorphosis.

 

In another post I will upload the footage I took from this visit.