The Skillful huntsman Part 2

The skillful huntsman isn’t exactly a game, but a tale, a group of university students Felix  Yoon, Mike Yamada, Khang Le and their lecturer Steve Robensin, took forward this challenge to create a visual development for the writing. The skillful huntsman a visual development of a Grimm Tale produced at the Art Center College of Design.  The skillful huntsman was first written down in a book of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, back when electricity was not available. The visual book was to explore the earliest stages of visual development, and this process behind in the art departments of feature films or video games. They were free to explore placing those characters into any time period they wished. They designed the environments, the characters, props, and vehicles. After reviewing this story, the students perused specific design topics. The list became the chapters of the book. A variety of brainstorming designs throughout each chapter. Applying plenty of visual development practice of drawing many small thumbnail sketches, to quickly brainstorm ideas, and start fleshing out new ideas.

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. Yamada states he starts character design with different exploration sketches, he starts with patterns and shapes, Yamada adds part of history and culture to give it certain realism to the character.  He then goes and uses a silhouette approach, to give an interesting shape to the character, to give the character different body shapes. Yamada later starts to establish a bulky feeling to the huntsman, he starts giving detail to the character, adds a theme that varies from a fanciful to science fictional theme. 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 states ‘it is economical for clients and the director to see a range of designs before committing time to any specific one,’[P.20]  this is an important stage in the initial stages. The sketches demonstrate successful variation, Robertson states ‘a designer can come up with a few and new aesthetic that nevertheless feels familiar and accessible’. Le states 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 a new sparking ideas to the story. Yamada starts to use different colour palettes after deciding on the shape of the character. To create something, one would need familiarity. Le states ‘Make an alien character too alien and the audience won’t relate to it’. Le continues by stating ‘This is the reasons why most alien design in movies have human features.’  [page18]. Yoon soon gives the 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’. 

Also, give this a book a read, this is very insightful for any artist. It takes one from the beginning phases of the actual concept art/design world, creating the character from the initial stages, giving a personality to the character, and how the world revolves around the characters. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves art and is really determined to go into the concept art world. These artists share their input, and keep everything from point a to point z interesting throughout the book and showed hard work and determination throughout.  

Reference:

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