The Skillful Huntsman Concepts Part 1

The book created was made to focus on the earliest stage of visual development, what typically occurs behind closed doors in art departments of feature films or video games.  


Starting with thumbnails Felix Yoon says he explores different ideas and directions to not limit himself, he wanted to give the hunter an Asian style to his costume. Scott Robertson who tutors the three students, mentions, that Yoon, uses a broad range of shape and design, the sketches present a lost line technique and a strong use of positive and negative shapes, which give an interesting character to the viewer. 

Mike Yamada, says starts character design with different exploration sketches, he starts with patterns and shapes, Yamada adds part of history and culture to give it a certain realism to the character.  He then goes and use a silhouette approach, to give an interesting shape to the character, with little details inside the shape, to give him a broad, slim or different body shape. Yamada later starts to establish a bulky feeling to the huntsman, he starts giving detail to the character, armour, weapons, and a theme, The headpieces designs aesthetics. Khang Le, starts with doodling on pages, giving certain importance to parts, like the face, body , he uses a series of interesting shapes and silhouettes to describe the character.

Le says ‘it is economical for clients and director to see a range of designs before committing time to any specific one,’ I believe this is an important stage in the initial stages. The sketches demonstrate successful variation, Robertson states ‘a designer can come up with a new aesthetic that nevertheless feels familiar and accessible’. 

The costume is important, Yoon focuses on the drapery, and carefully building these silhouettes. This gives an interesting movement, activity and texture to them in the eyes of the viewer. Le says that after the thumbnail phase is done, it all comes in rough sketching, everything that a character carries can help tell a story about them. Story means design and design will lead to  new ideas to the story. An item that can be of a family heirloom. Yamada starts to use different colour sets after deciding on the shape of the character. 

To create something one would need familiarity and having something abstract. Le says ‘Make an alien character too alien and the audience won’t relate to it’ I completely agree with this statement, a person needs something familiar to create such an enticing character. Le continues by saying ‘ This is the reasons why most alien design in movies have human features.’  The designs need to work with each other, when newer designs are made.
Le says, he uses pencils for most of his designs, because when he makes a mistake it can turn into details which he could not have thought otherwise.

Yoon soon gives he costume design different time periods, ancient costuming, he dropped the idea on the drapery because, he’s a traveling hunter, and 'I thought it would be inconvenient for a traveling hunter to wear drapery as part of his costume'. Yoon then comes out finalizing the look of the character. This is interesting because, looking at this procedure for just the protagonists takes weeks and weeks of group work, and different talents.

  

McCaig, I. 2005, THE SKILLFULLHUNTMAN, Visual Development Of Grimm Tale At Art Center College Of Design. Hong Kong, Design Studio Press.