Sunday, 15 January 2023

Major Project - "Gold"

For my FMP I've decided all my characters will be part of the same universe, the same story, inspired by Romanian folklore and fairy tales. Through this, I want to show that I can give my characters diverse looks and personality, while still showing them belonging to the same world and concept. 

A while back, I started putting together my own folklore inspired story as a past time. I drew inspiration from the Romanian fairytale "Praslea cel voinic si merele de aur" (Praslea the brave and the golden apples) to make my own version of it and some of the sketches of the characters were part of my portfolio for applying to university. I think it is only right my final project consist of the characters that got me into uni and that developed so much during these years, alongside with me and my art skills. 

Through this project I want to demonstrate the development of my art style, clean and expressive sculpting that portrays the characters' personalities and shows an adequate amount of detail and the ability to produce characters belonging to the same universe yet still possessing their own charm, as well as diversity in age, gender and body shape, while also conveying their role in the story (protagonits, antagonist, helpers etc.) through shape language, colour and detail. 

Moving on to the characters:

1. The protagonist - The Hero 

In the original story, the protagonist was the youngest son of a king. He uses a bow to catch the thief stealing the king's golden apple (yes, they were real actual gold), so I thought my character should be an archer. I also thought, why not change the protagonist to be a girl, just for the fun of it, and just to see how the image of the character would change in my mind's eye. 

                 

Since she is an archer, she would have to wear lighter armour (mostly made of leather, with a metal chest plate at most, to protect the vital organs). I want to incorporate elements of traditional Romanian clothes into her attire as well. Taking into consideration practical details like having to fight and technical details like the time I have for each character, I decided to give her a braided hairstyle, with the braids secured around her head like a crown, in order to be able to sculpt and retop that more cleanly. I quite like her silhouette and the shapes in her design, as they suggest the idea of a hero. 



2. The Helper - St. Friday

In every story, there is one character, old and wise, that advises and teaches the protagonist. In some Romanian fairytales, the prince is helped by his talking flying horse, but in others, one of the personifications of the weekdays shows up (mostly Wednesday, Friday or Sunday). I chose Friday, as she is mostly portrayed as either being a very gentle granny that helps the hero if they show empathy to her, or a wrathful deity that punishes people who work on Fridays (Friday is a holly day that is supposed to be for rest and prayer). I wanted to show this duality so I made her look like a petite yet spry grandma in traditional clothing. Yet, when you look back at what she is carrying in the pouches on her back and you take in the details, you begin to think she might not be who she pretends to be. Her expression is going to be frozen in a perpetual benevolent smile, so I will sculpt that in. 




3. The Antagonist - Zmeu

Described in some stories as an ogre, some as chimaera and some as a dragon humanoid, I chose to go with the last one as it was the most memorable version for me as a kid. In the story I mentioned, he is the one stealing the golden apples and he and his two brothers kidnapped another king's daughters, that the hero saves, marrying the youngest one. I want Zmeu to have a bulky body type, similar to the orcs in World of Warcraft, but slightly more lean, since he is, at the end of the day, similar to a lizard. When making the concept, I made him too human-like at first, at least the body, so I tried to push his ribcage out and up and give a more serpentine shape to his posture. Back in the day, most of the clothes worn by royalty (and since he lives in a palace he is, somewhat, royalty) were influenced by outside cultures that occupied Romania in the past, like Turkey, Hungary, Byzant, so I'm going to have him wear something similar to that, which would make him look alien to this world, enforcing the point that he is in fact, intruding in it. 


































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