Shape Language (03/10/2024)

 In this lesson, we discussed the importance of shape language and how to apply this to a character design. We talked about what the main 3 shape most commonly represented.

• Circles - Safety, Soft, Friendly, Approachable, Trustworthy
• Most commonly used for protagonists, pets, children and caregivers.
• Squares - Reliable, Strong, Sturdy, Supportive, Stubborn
• Most commonly used for caregivers, protectors and supporting characters.
• Triangles - Danger, Fear, Evil, Unpredictable, Smart
• Most commonly used for villains, antagonists and monsters.

Shape Design Exercise

In this exercise, we were given the choice to design a friendly character using triangles or a dangerous character using circles. I chose to design a guardian/ protector character using triangles.

My main inspirations for this design come from Greek mythology. Medusa is a gorgon, a monster depicted to have snakes for hair. She represents fear and terror as whomever look at her, turned to stone. With this knowledge in mind, she is also depicted as a symbol of protection. Her snake hair represents the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. She symbolizes protection because she's a dangerous threat in order to ward off negative dangers and threats. She's dangerous to repel evil. This made her the perfect inspiration for my triangular guardian character.

Another inspiration for this design, is Scylla also from Greek Mythology. She's most commonly depicted as a 12 foot tall sea monster with 6 heads. The moral of Scylla's story is seen as a lesson in navigating difficult decisions, this could mean for example, choosing the lesser of 2 evils.

I liked the idea of my character choosing to become a monster to protect her children. Following design inspirations from Scylla and Medusa, I made her a sea creature with eels for her hair and tails. I liked the idea of her electrifying the waters so whoever dares to enter will be shocked on contact hence the lighting bolts underneath her in the bottom right drawing. I gave her a triangular body and I made the eels faces triangular to reinforce that she's supposed to be dangerous.

Overall, I find this task very useful as it brought me out of my comfort zone. I don't normally design characters that use the shapes that are opposites to their nature so this was a fun challenge and I definitely want to experiment more with this in the future. This task has helped me develop a better understanding on how shape design can be used to create characters and I will use this newfound knowledge to improve my future character designs.