Arts and Entertainment Technologies - Fall 2020
Concepts of Visual Style
As you may know from my "ABOUT ME" page, I am a current Senior at the University of Texas at Austin. For the past 15 weeks, I have learned all about character concept art in a course called "Concepts of Visual Style". My outstanding professor, Neal Daughtery, along with his fabulous TA's Ashley Gonzalez and Elena Liem, provided our class a plethora of tools, knowledge, and insight on the world of concept art. In our 15 week long journey, my classmates and I each developed a single unique character proteus. This design process was entirely about developing and exploring our personal style: Neal, Ashley, and Elena gave our class complete and total artistic freedom! In every single class, they inspired confidence in their students and gave incredibly valuable feedback and critiques along the way to help us produce work that we can all be very proud of. So, without further ado, please let me introduce you to my character, Popo.
Popo is a character that is loosely based on my actual maternal grandfather, August Batla, whom I call Popo. This character is also a sort of version of myself, (more about that later, though).
Popo the character is a 65-year-old Texan living in the peak years of his retirement. He enjoys traveling the world, spoiling his grandchildren, reading about World War II, and snacking on assorted nuts. Popo lives by the motto “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere” (made famous by singer Jimmy Buffet). If Popo’s awake, chances are he is treating himself to a cocktail, or watching a football game.
CORPOREAL FORM
To your right, you will find a variety of Popo's most used items. First, a point-and-shoot digital camera. Popo carries this in his pocket while traveling abroad for quick, easy photos. Popo finds bridge cameras to be annoying bulky. Second, a simple Gin and Tonic. Popo drinks at least one of these every day. He claims that Gin and Tonics put "hairs on your chest", (aka make you a manly-man). Next, a ponytail comb, and a mustache comb. These two tools keep Popo's locks flowing and facial hair looking sharp. Now you will find his earring collection. Both of Popo's ears are pierced, but he only wears one earring at a time. He wears a different earring depending on the occasion. His black diamond earrings are Sunday Mass.
worn during black tie events exclusively, while his christian cross studs are used for
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Popo the character was not created for any specific reason, (meaning I didn't design him specifically for a video game, movie, novel, cartoon show, or comic). He is purely a character created out of love for my own Popo.
Amongst my family and friends, Popo is very popular. Everyone loves and adores him because he is thoughtful, sincere, hardworking, and incredibly intelligent. Those who know Popo admire him so much that they treat him like they would a movie star. Therefore, I thought it be appropriate to create a poster of Popo for his biggest fans! This poster highlights his most defining physical characteristics: his oversized glasses, his killer mustache, and single earring.
STATIC PROTEUS POSTER
According to Yale University, temporal media, "is information that is directly consumed by a user, and that varies with time. Examples include music, digital sound files, computer animations, and video clips."
For Concepts of Visual Style, students were asked to create a temporal media piece for our unique characters. I decided to take the static "celebrity" poster and animate it using Adobe After Effects.
This short gif shows a smooth shift of dramatic light and animated background text.
TEMPORAL PROTEUS POSTER
To be completely frank, it took me a LONG time to settle on a character design. I designed almost 10 different characters before I choose to continue with Popo's concept. Then, I had to make a decision on the style of the character. You will find that my original sketches of Popo are quite similar to the final character sheet. I decided to use Adobe Illustrator to design my character and character assets for a few reasons. First, I am most confident in my Illustrator abilities, (versus Photoshop, or any other related programs). Second, Illustrator's clean, crisp vector graphics parallel Popo's personality. You see, my grandfather, Popo, is a chemical engineer and incredibly "type A". Everything in Popo's world is "black and white", and he is rigidly organized. I wanted
the character style to mirror my grandfather's personality. Therefore, Popo is created from vector shapes with very minimal, flat shading. The color palette is more muted and plain, like the colors you would see in an elderly person's home.
EARLY CONCEPT SKETCHES
Thank you for taking the time to browse through my collection of concept art! If you would like to know more about my semester-long journey, please download my reflection letter below (click the grey pdf button below)! In my reflection, I dive deeper on my artistic process, share my overall class experience, and talk a little bit about my growth as an artist.