Responsive Brief: Initial Ideas

For our responsive brief, we have been given the oppertunity to work in our chosen area of practice within the context of transmedia storytelling. I personally am interested in concept art for film and game, and I feel that my strength at the moment is character design over detailed environments. My first though was to design a superhero character. Superheroes give great examples of transmedia storytelling. A comic book hero narrative can be adapted effectively into an animated television series. We often see heroes adapted into video game characters and see them appear on the big screen. Each time they are adapted. They are re-designed to fit the media, whilst still being recognisable almost as a brand mascot. For example, a gritty hyper realistic game adaptation of a hero would likely be unsuitable for a child's cuddly toy. The cuddly toy design would likely have to be less detailed, with no sharp points or violent connotations. A teen animation series might contain a simple narrative e.g hero prevents villain form taking over world, whereas a Hollywood adaptation may explore more political themes or psychoanalysis. Perhaps the hero will be depicted as flawed, reaching out to an audience who really want to peel away at the character and feel a more deep and emotional attachment, whereas younger teens would rather see a justing bringing knight in shining armour.

I began my project by collecting a moodboard showing selected heroes existing across different media platforms:

As you can see, I produced notes on top of the moodboard picking on the adaptations relevant to the particular media platforms.

To demonstrate my understanding of transmedia, I decided that for my project I would produce two designs. I will at first embark on a design for a currently undecided media platform, which I will then adapt to fit a different platform. This way I will show an understanding of how characters must be adapted in order to stretch across different areas of the media. To begin my exploration, I produced some generic non-media specified designs, drawing inspiration from my moodoard:

My first attempt was a particularly cliche cape wearing superhero. The second attempt shows a more simple spiderman-like design, yet is still rather undefined with no real memorable silhouette. Considering how I could give my character an effective silhouette, I thought of heroes with horns such as 'Daredevil' and 'Hellboy'. I ended producing something that reflected the male sheep or 'Ram'. I thought this could be an interesting approach as it bears british denotations instead of the usually americanised hero. I reflected on this idea with another moodboard:

Hopefully by considering an original 'Ram' horned design, I can achieve a very recognisable silhouette for my hero.