The Ins and Outs of Anna's Character Design

Designing the look for my protagonist was a difficult and somewhat daunting task. Making a movie is interesting in that parts of the film seem very clear in my mind’s eye while other bits are foggy at best. The design for Anna was definitely a hazy affair. -----  As much as I had constructed a story around her, truth be told I had no idea what she looked like. Because she is obviously the most important element in Porcelain I was very uneasy that my head space was so vacant regarding her aesthetic makeup.

In the spring semester of 2010 I first started to sink my teeth into this film. I created my first story board as well as a comic version of the narrative. At this time my biggest inspiration for Anna’s look was the character Sofia from the TV series DeadWood.

Sofia

Here are some early drawings of Anna:

After completing my third year at Emily Carr I felt that I had made headway with the narrative of Porcelain but I was very dissatisfied with the look I had haphazardly constructed for Anna at this point.

The very start of the spring semester 2011 in my hiatus year in the Digital Animation program at Capilano I restart my work on Porcelain, beginning with Anna’s character design. The only thing that I knew about her aesthetic makeup is that I definitely did not want her to look like what I had drawn so far.

So I started collecting reference images of anything and everything I thought could help.

About five days and 1600 images later I had something of a direction. Unfortunately, what I wanted contradicted itself. At this point I wanted to design Anna in a way that resembled the advertisements and dolls of the Victorian era but I also wanted the appeal of Disney character design.

  

The following examples are a few of the least attractive of my collected images, but all and all Victorian society of the late 1800s  had a very different idea of what constituted aesthetically appealing little girls.

Not even sure if this is a boy or a girl

I like the teeth on this one

CONUMDRUM!!!

Should I design Anna to match the Victorian look or to go with more of a contemporary aesthetic? 

Interestingly this question harkened a debate I have been dealing with ever since entering the world of art as an animator. To be entertaining or avant-garde? 

If I went with the Victorian look my film would definitely gain more credibility in the art world as the style would be somewhat unusual and the juxtaposition of old Victorian aesthetics with the contemporary medium of digital animation would be sure to arouse academic interest.

 However, I know this style would not go over well with the general public, nor would it do anything to help illustrate a marketable skill set geared towards the commercial animation industry. The odd face shape of children in Victorian advertisement had a very good chance of not reading with a contemporary audience and 

I’d run the risk of alienating the viewer and potential employers from Anna.

On the other hand, if I went with a more contemporary look for Anna and based my design on Disney like aesthetics Porcelain would have a much more difficult time gaining recognition by the art community which presents a definite threat as many festivals I am interested in fall into that category. The combination of appealing character design and digital animation seems as if it doesn’t have a place in the art world, as it would likely be dismissed as too commercial.

WHY CAN’T ART AND ENTERTAINMENT GET ALONG?

I’m not sure why commercial quality work has such a bad reputation in the art world. It takes a great deal of skill and talent to create appealing characters (far more, I would argue, then unappealing). On the plus side, designing Anna as aesthetically pleasing I would be demonstrating a skill set that is sought after in the animation industry and as an animation student looking for a future career in her field of study,  this is a huge bonus.

After about a day of debate, I decided to try for an aesthetically appealing character design. Really, when it comes down to it, I want to make a film that captivates the audience, not one that caters to the art world and isolates the viewer.

And now DRAWING TIME!!

And now also the hard part.

As I said, aesthetically appealing character design is not easy.

Here are some early sketches, none of which succeeded in capturing what I wanted.

At this point I was feeling frustrated. Anna had not become any clearer in my grey matter and my horrid drawings were leading me to believe that I did not possess the talent to bring her from the blurry recesses of my brain to the clear reality of the paper in front of me. 

Back to reference images! 

I decided to go back and pick the facial characteristic I felt drawn to from my massive image collection then combine them to hopefully create Anna. (Like a horrible Frankenstein little girl)

Here are some images that I referenced often

Then I finally drew THIS!

Might look like a freaky bald head to you,

But to me Anna stopped being blurry and came into focus.

It was like this one drawing was the key to my creativity towards Anna and everything from this point forward seemed to flow so much easier.

Adding hair to the head was my first compromise when considering the technical aspects of CG animation.

As you can see I originally planned for Anna’s hair to be just over shoulder length.

one of my hair reference images

However, if I were to go with this style I would be opening a whole world of trouble in the animation and rigging phases of my film. 

For all of you non GC people, longer hair is a problem because you somehow have to prevent the hair geometry from crashing through the body geometry. It can be done but keep in mind that for films like Disney’s Tangled there is a whole team of people whose sole job is to make sure there are no bad hair days! 

Since I am not Disney and cannot afforded a team of hair experts, my final hair design ended up looking like this:

As you can see I decided to give Anna dark hair as blond hair just seemed too expected.

I was worried about the length not being historically accurate but after looking into it I found that shorter hair on girls was not uncommon in the Victorian era and usually signified that the child had been ill. (Which could also work with the theme of the story). Short hair equals sanitation apparently. 

Interestingly I also found out that men were encouraged to have beards to strain out diseases.

Strange.

Seems like Victorians needed to get the tangles in their hair pseudoscience combed out. (har har)

Onwards to designing clothes! 

For my film Anna will have three different outfits for the three different acts of the film. However, in my wisdom or laziness or really time management consideration I decided that it would be best to only model two different outfits and simply change the colours to create the third (and perhaps add a hat). So back once again to my reference images to design Anna’s main outfit.

Here is some reference material that I used:

Fun game! Guess what this is!

If you guessed a Victorian boy’s frock you are correct!

Back in the day, children wore frocks, something like an apron, to keep mud off their clothes. If you ask me, this is a particularly nice clothing article to be used as a mud apron.

Like her hair, I needed to keep in mind technical aspects of computer animation when designing Anna’s dress. Luckily, the rigid quality of Victorian fashion plays to my advantage and I could keep true to the period without worrying too much about cloth simulation.

Again for those of you that aren’t familiar with computer animation, cloth simulation, like hair, usually has a team of people making sure that the clothing functions the way it’s suppose to.

Here are some thumbnail sketches I drew:

Eventually I got the design down to the top image below. 

However, I had to rethink the long jacket as it would cause problem in the rigging phase. I needed something that divided the top half of the body from the lower. First I tried a sash as they were quite fashionable, but ended up going with the design on the right.

And there it is!

Anna’s concept design done and ready to start the modeling phase. Overall I am pleased that I was able to maintain some Victorian elements to her look, such as the small feet, while creating an appealing yet somewhat creepy doll like character design.

Not all sunshine and roses. After finishing this design a classmate told me she looked like a Lolita doll. Not knowing what she was talking about I looked it up. Apparently it’s some kind of gothic anime thing.

Oh boy. Oh jeez…

I must say that I really am not a big fan of the anime look, or at least not since my “tween” days … Did I somehow, inadvertently revert to my 13 year old self?

…

Otherwise, responses have been positive. Many “Good luck dealing with the dress and hair” remarks however.

Good luck indeed.

Moving on.