Lucy: Week 1

12/1/2015 – Day 1: Maria photo-bashing

My first task is to design Maria, one of the protagonists of the story. After reading the summery of the story and watching some of the original film Metropolis. I felt like I had a good grasp of what the character Maria should be in terms of her character. He clothing should reflect her purpose and general character portrayed in the film. With this in mind, I began to gather reference imagery. Just to help place my initial ideas and also help me to create new ones. I gathered a range of images onto a Pinterest board. (http://uk.pinterest.com/lucytstm/fmpmet-maria/) Once I had what I felt like were enough images to work from, I started to photo-bash them together.

I created a range of designs using existing imagery, to create a signature look for Maria. Because she is seen as some sort of an advocate for the workers’ rights, she has slight authority and a presence amongst the worker. However she still needs to appear as one of them in order to have and gain their trust when fighting the workers cause. I’m using a lot of ‘power piece’ clothing. Clothes with strong structure to create a bold silhouette looks quite interesting and can say a lot about the character. From early on I really liked the idea of the hood. It almost reminded me of a nun, and I felt this suited her character. She only wants to do good for the people less fortunate than her and for it to be completely selfless and no way give her any personal gain other than for the workers and elites to live in harmony and have mutual respect for one another. Below are the photo-bashes I came up with.

13/1/2015 – Day2: Maria silhouettes

I took the photo-bashed design ans silhouetted them to see how each design read and which to me, stood out and felt like ‘Maria’.  I wanted to look warn and ragged but still regal in order to maintain the presence she has over the other workers, that gain her the respect she has for being so helpful to the workers cause. I picked my favourite silhouettes and iterated on them further. I them picked from those and started to break up the silhouette just to see how they may work as clothes.

After doing this I felt like I was beginning to lose the original essence of the character, so I decided to go back into some of my favourite silhouettes and began to draw in the detail. I did this by doing some basic line art over the silhouette and continued to do so for several of the silhouettes.

14/1/2015 – Day 3: Maria, line art

I finished the line art today and realized the complexities of the clothing I was trying to design for Maria. I decided to do a breakdown of the things I liked about my favourite silhouettes. For example, I loved to hood and long, trench coat, but when drawing it out I felt Marias figure was lost and that ruined the silhouette. This made me realise, that I really want Maria to have a hood and big coat; but I desperately needed to design what was underneath that to understand the clothes better.

15/1/2015 – Day 4: Maria, under clothes designs

After further exploration for the clothing underneath the coat I came to a final design and decided it was time to go in depth with the face deign for Maria. I thought of Marias age to be late 20's possibly early 30’s, so her face needs to show that life experience. As she's a worker, I feel her face should look warn and damaged due to her hard life; I also want her to have a hopeful glow, a look of determination that she will not be beaten down and fight for what she believes is right.

I also went on to look into potential hair designs. Again, because she’s a worker it needs to be practical. I really do like the original hair I gave her but I felt exploring the hair was necessary in order to add extra to the character.

15/1/2015 – Day 5: Maria final design and colour

Today as a team me and Ed decided on a final design for Maria. She had the desired look I sought out to create, but now it was time for colour. This, for me, is the hardest part of the design process. Especially when a lot of the reference imagery was grey and very dark, muted colours. I think I shall be working on this through the weekend but this character is on track with our timeline I would say. Also over the weekend, I hope to begin the final, full, colour concept art piece for Maria.

Maria final design

Colour

Final concept sneak peak