Character Design - Task 1 - Personification

Week 1 (28/8/23)
Jessica Tjoe / 0361482
Character design/ BDCM/ Institute of Innovation and Technology
Task 1 - Personification

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Week 1 - The moodboard

In the first week of class, we had to create the a moodboard. Elements that'll essentially help us create our character. My moodboard involves a lot of halloween aesthetic and hats. A lot of hats. 

Week 2 - Concept world creation

What kind of world does your character live in? What about the world around them? The setting I chose was Fontaine due to it's steampunk like setting and fashion. I already developed the story behind Citrouelle in advanced. 

Name: Citrouelle
Age: 18
Occupation: Phantom thief/ Bookshop owner
Vision: Electro

Weapon: Catalyst (book of delusions)
Abilities: Eyes from the off shore (stuns enemies for 5 sec)

 

Citrouelle is the owner of the far eyes bookstore located in fontaine. By day he is just another citizen of fontaine going about his life. But by night he is a phantom thief known as The Phantom theif Jack O Lantern. He is known to be a mad man and people tend to avoid him due to his eccentricity and obsession with the prophecy of Fontaine trying to find ways to avoid his early demise.

World Building

Somewhere in a relatively unknown area of Fontaine, there is a little bookshop. The far-eye tales is one of extraordinary mystery, with gears and clocks donning the interior of the store, and with plenty of books galore.

The owner is a mystery to the people, for his eccentric nature and speech patterns would leave people riddled and gone. Shunned and begone would the people tell him. For the eyes on his hands see their hearts.

There is nothing for him to fear except his own inevitable demise.The prophecy of fontaine will come true and he cannot keep running forever. “But how? How can I avoid my untimely death, I still have the whole of Teyvat to see. Perhaps there is a method…”

He decided to become the phantom thief Jack O lantern. Stealing precious artifacts so that one day he may prevent his own death.

Week 3 - Silhouette

For Citrouelle's silhouette I wanted to go with something sinister yet cute. Citrouelle is a very interesting character because of his gray morals compared to most characters in the world of Teyvat who are either good or evil. I mostly went for triangles regarding his upper body though I would change it up a bit by using squares. 

As you can see I played with the designs quite a bit, trying out different themes and motifs. I kept a couple of things consistent with the top hat, the flared out collar and cape, and the bow-tie. For the posing and style I was inspired by the designs and poses of Vivziepop's characters in Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Mainly taking inspiration from Alastor the radio demon, a very prominent character in Hazbin Hotel, though I did take references from other characters such as Charlie, Millie and Stolas. Vivzie's Characters are known to portray strong shape language and it makes it easy to identify what kind of character they are.

Since my character's body type is that of a young male I personally experimented with different types of pant lengths and how they would affect Citrouelle's design. And Although only the petit characters are known to have bloomer shorts so far, I personally prefer the ones where this design element is implemented. Due to the fact Citrouelle himself is a very eccentric and chaotic individual. 

 

Week 4 - Finalization of silhouette

In the end, the final silhouette is a combination of number 5and number 7. The elements of number 5 I took were the hat, cape and socks. I mostly kept all of silhouette number 7 intact because it displayed Citrouelle’s personality perfectly.