This work examines the use of light and colour in character design. It was important to me these characters felt as though they were from the same era and style of the original tapestries. However, it was also important that these characters reflected their role within my film, and that who they are or who I wanted them to be could be translated across to modern audiences.
For example, I wanted the hunter character to be handsome, but to modern audiences all the human faces in the original tapestries appear unconventional to modern audiences. After trying multiple iterations, I decided to partially obscure the face in the shadow of the hat. Animation allows for this manipulation of light to become a part of the character, and overall creates a mysterious effect. It also highlights the character’s other features - including the lips, hinting to an undercurrent of desire.
I took inspiration from the work of Kentaro Miura this week, who’s manga Beserk is inspired by Medieval Europe. His character designs helped me explore this challenge of characters which modern audiences will perceive as beautiful, without being out of place with the historical setting. Miura also has a few prominent androgynous characters in his work, and I found the way they are woven into the setting made me think about what aspects of this era already have elements of androgyny present.
The design for the maiden I had explored in a scene before, and I wanted to emulate her expression in the original tapestries, so I struggled less with translating the character into my works. I felt the shape of her garments should be more striking, as part of the purpose of this project is reversing the story of the tapestries, and the typical tropes contained within them. Hence, the knight is not captured by the maiden (like the unicorn was) - instead it is the hunter they are interested in. Thus, the maiden did not need to be an object of desire.
Moreover, the knight is hidden, to preserve androgyny and anonymity, so the difficulty was in creating a new character which is not within the original work, but still looks cohesive. I had done a few different objects with the knight already in them though, so my main focus was emulating the shapes of people in these tapestries, rather than coming up with a new design entirely.
Hence, I found the hunter to be the most difficult design, as I struggled trying to find a style which would depict both a beautiful character and mesh with the tapestry setting. When looking at Miura’s work I first tried emulating his style, but found it didn’t suit the project. Then I thought more conceptually about his work, and asked what made the character look beautiful. The eyelashes, hair and lips communicated the character was intended to be attractive. I then applied this line of thinking to my work, having realised the face did not need to be detailed, and then coming up with the idea of obscuring it - and thus amplifying these features.