Narrative and Character - Character Presentation

Proposal - Legends of the New Year

Character Project: Expressions Practice

  Halloween is a time of celebration, dress-up and parties. I myself spent a little time this afternoon working on expression ideasfor two of the characters for the character project - the hero, and Nian. As one of the components of a character profile is expressions.

  Nian was a lot of fun to draw this time around, I found there was a lot I could do with those big eyebrows of his to express emotion, The angle of the head also helped convey emotion. I attempted to convey fear in 15 and 16 but I think I got sadness out of 15 instead of fear while 16 conveys it a lot better despite both being attempts at the same facial expression. Faces for the her however, was slightly harder due to the the design I had come up with and the fact he was a somewhat realistic human. Tried stretching it a little with 6 but he feels like a definite zone for improvement. Like with Nian, I think eyebrows are going to be a prominent component in his emotions.

Character Project: Influence Map

    For my project's influence map I looked mainly at style but also at games that I could use as the basis for my game. The inclusion of wraiths and smoke in the influence map were a development of the idea that cards could be gained by vanquishing bad spirits. In Chinese, the translation of "Ch'i" or "Qi" (the life-force as described in Buddhist teachings) is "breath" or "wind", so it might make sense that its negative "bad luck" counterpart is also related to air. Because bad energy is seen as pollutive, I got the idea of portraying it as black smoke, which in both Eastern and Western cultures is seen as unsightly and toxic.

    I am tempted towards colouring my Nian white, as this is a colour that in Chinese culture relates to death. While I have found images portraying Nian as green, I feel certain this is based off the copper statue that dominates my influence map. It seems inappropriate to colour Nian green as Chinese jade (generally a light green or dark green colour) is and was a highly-desired material in Chinese history, comparable to how gold, diamond or possibly marble has been treated in European aand African culture.