Character Design
Today's character workshop was about key points in a character: colour, theme, shapes and emotion. We were set two tasks over the session. The first was to take an established character that we were each assigned and rework them to fit with one of the cards we were given for the character project. The second was to draw silhouettes of a given character archetype in order to get the hang of character outlines.
For the first task I was given Fox McCloud. The card I had that stood out most for me was "collecting". I had a bit of flexibility as Fox is cast as your typical brave and confident hero. So I took the word and decided to draw him as a scavenger. Who would travel the galaxy collecting parts for the Arwing or trinkets that interested him. I think what I have came off rather well, the other thing that changed thematically was that as a scavenger he's probably be a bit dirtier and scruffier than the real Fox McCloud.
I had a bit of time left on the task so I decided to have a go at fitting him into the "numeracy" theme. This one was a little trickier to pull off, I first thought of other words that related like "logic" and "scientist" but decided to have a go at drawing him as a cyborg. I don't think this one turned out as well as Scavenger Fox because looking at it now, he looks more like Wolf O'Donnel so the character's essence is therefore lost.
With the second task I was assigned the archetype of Ninja and I generally had fun with this. I got the hang of outlines and I had the most fun defining the flow of the body and in some cases the body shape. The one thing that was suggested to me however was that the forms were too similar to each other so what I have is 13 outlines of possibly the same individual.
Games Workshop
Soon after the character design workshop Justin (our lecturer) broke out the board and card games. I spent the evening in a group of five led by Justin that included me, Vlad, Lewis and Andy. The first game we played was Takenoko, a game where the task was to collectively construct and manage a bamboo garden of an Asian emperor while completing three types of task: Grow bamboo stalks, create garden layouts and feed the resident giant panda said bamboo.
The thing I loved most about the game was the sense of cooperation and competition. We were all building one garden but we were competing for the highest score. Vlad won the game, achieving enough tasks to trigger endgame and I came a few points behind in second place. But the intrigue going on was so engrossing that I didn't mind that I came second. I was able to get some good-scoring tasks done especially late into the game.
The second game was Revenge Of The B-Movie, a rapid-fire but hilarious card game where we were all (again) competing and cooperating to see who could make the best B movie names. Some of the names we were devising were hilariously silly like "Day of the Alien Priest Woman" (one of mine) or "[something] and the 50 Foot Lawyer From Down the Road" (one of Lewis's). Once again I came second, with Justin winning the game. It was an exiting game that reminded me a little of Cards Against Humanity by the way people play for laughs in a way that is either wholeheartedly funny, or so bad its good (Justin proposed that a rule where movies that fell into that category got bonus points).
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