#thinking about ways to diversify facial features too... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

famous-pprophet · 1 year

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I've been trying to learn how to draw and I love your art style so much I've been practicing by copying it (just in my notebook not like sharing it anywhere) as I love the way you capture characters and emotion but I was wondering how do you go about simplifying a character? I'm not sure if this makes sense but like what do you look for when taking realistic looking characters and translating them into a stylistic version?

Thank you for the ask! keep tracing and copying, its a great way of building the muscle memory and familiarizing yourself with breaking things down into shapes. It means a lot that my art is something that you wanted to use that for! https://twitter.com/meatgirI/status/1606375868959543298?s=20&t=ve-GgU0nMrUBRZnTj0kI3Q I would say that this tweet by meatgiri is a good way of finding different facial features and breaking the face/eyes/nose into shapes, and that its a really good way of getting started. However I also think that learning proportions and anatomy is a really good way of further pushing this skill. im going to explain it a bit, but if it feels overwhelming or makes art something thats not fun, you dont have to use any of it. youll pick up these things through practice and observation.

I like trace out these lines on my face. they follow these proportions that are applicable to almost all people. once ive got this figured out, i start to fill in the eyes, nose and mouth.

(some examples of characters... see how this rule still applies even though they look very different.

again see the tutorial i linked above to get a feel for breaking these facial features into shapes. this is what i would suggest to practice different types of faces if you dont have a super good understanding of facial structure

as you observe more in faces, you notice a lot of difference in face shape and structure. but this is a really good way to play with JUST facial features and maintain them consistently

if you want to get into facial structure, then you wanna start looking at the actual anatomy

try to picture where your face sits on your skull. this can help you decide how MUCH of the bone sticks out from under the face. if you are underweight, older, or have shaper facial features, youre going to see a lot more off things like cheekbones

so now even though im using the same skull as a base, i can still have a different face shape. because this person might be older, they have a stronger jawline, and their features are sunken in

and the cool thing is that this isnt just applicable from a 3/4th angle. the proportions are always like that!! they might change because of perspective or the angle but honestly at that point youd want to start trying to develop your sense of 3d space

this is just a really simple way of diversifying one single method of drawing faces. notice how i only used the one "base" shape

and here you can see examples of how their faces sit on the skull. obviously you dont need to be drawing perfectly anatomical skulls every time you draw a person, but it does make good practice to trace those shapes. basically training yourself to get better at observing different features!

you can get into even more varying features when you start to use different skull shapes too. all of these characters have different skull shapes and their features change depending on how they sit on that skull

here is a good demonstration of anatomically correct differences in skulls of different races. Obviously i tend to think of it as masculine/feminine rather than male/female, but this is a scientific model used for identification (which is based off of sex and not gender)

age can also play into your skull shape and facial proportions. combining all of this knowledge you can not only have a wide range of different characters, but you can also tell a story.

again the less fat you have on your face, the more sunken in your features are going to be. so you can tell your audience about your character just from this alone

this is a good example. its a soldier before and after war. you can see how the stress, trauma, living conditions, etc, have all changed how he looks.

obviously this is getting into the real nitty gritty anatomical aspect of it but i do think its a really good way to have your characters feel like they belong to the environment they are in. it also just further illustrates my point earlier, how you can have MANY different types of faces even if you are using the same base for all of them. again if this seems overwhelming, its ok! a lot of this is stuff you pick up via observation as you continue practicing. draw what makes you comfortable, draw what you think is fun, and start off simple. Also know that you really dont need to be going into such detail and drawing the skulls haha. thats really just moreso to demonstrate the fundamental understanding. Good luck with art, keep pushing yourself to learn more and draw what you see!! youll pick up on all these subtle details as you keep at it

#art tutorial #i overexplained this!#facial anatomy #character design #sort of

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spacedlexi · 2 years

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yea, you definitely have some same face problems. even in the examples you provided everyone's nose looks almost the same, the face shapes look basically the same, the lips all have about the same profile.. the characters are extremely expressive but i think the way you draw people is very methodical! i think you just need to push that a little harder. in the second image you can see the variety the best, but they all still have about the same facial structure. (1/2)

you just need to push it more! maybe start by experimenting with making eyes or chins different sizes (abt all the faces you provided in that example came to the same little point), or drawing real people's faces next to each other in your style (helps with drawing identifying features) i think expressiveness is often sacrificed in favor of facial variety and you have that shit DOWN so i honestly think if you just pushed that variety a little harder your art would really rock the house (2/2)

ok now im just gonna straight up disagree with you. in those examples you can see pointy noses with rounded bridges and round noses with hard straight bridges. i dont even always draw a bridge in clems case because i make her bridge flat and nose round. i didnt draw ajs bridge either for the same reason. ive only recently started softening violets bridge because when i looked at her reference recently it wasnt as sharp as i remembered.

and for the lips some characters have thicker lips while others are smaller and some have rounded tops and some have that heart shape indent, which may be soft or sharp itself.

also when you say "same facial structure" i dont agree either about that specific image youre talking about. clem has a heart shaped face with a visible chin, while ruby is similar her cheeks and chin are softer. louis has a longer face, harder but still soft chin/jaw with less cheek, while mitch has sharper hard features like a sharp jaw and chin with a cleft, plus visible cheek bones that the others dont have with less cheek. i dont even know what you mean when you say they come to "the same little point" you mean chin? they do not all come to the same point... theyre also not very pointy? in mitchs case its hard and flat...

and with eyes im Always drawing different shapes? the only thing im always fighting myself on is not making them too big because i myself have big eyes and i always push it in my drawings when i dont mean to.

heres a little chart i draw sometimes when im trying to figure out how to draw a character i havent drawn yet or when im trying to refine ones im already familiar with. i line everyone up like this and try to give them as unique and identifying a shape as possible. obviously it can only go so far when im trying to also capture the characters likeness, but it helps me see each individual aspect of their face and try to make them their own. like for clem i give her cheek and chin but no cheekbone and a soft jaw, overall soft heart shaped. violet has cheekbone And cheek, plus a rounded chin and harder jaw, overall triangular shape. minnie has cheekbone but no cheek and a strong and hard jaw, overall square shape. idk how you want me to diversify them more than this?

and heres an (older) example of me trying to make characters that share lots of similarities look distinct

i feel like youre Trying to be nice so im not trying to be mean here. i just dont agree with what youre specifically pointing out... im already doing what i can to avoid same face so youre just gonna have to give me time on that i guess...

#replies with lexi #incognito #would tag this l*ng post but dont want tumblr to flag it or whatever 🙄 sorry

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pocketsizedquasar · 2 years

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idk how u can see multiple brown ppl going like “hey this makes me uncomfortable because it looks like a racist caricature” and make it abt urself fjakdjsksjs like… ?? caricatures are abt how certain features get exaggerated and also about how certain images/depictions have been used in history. hooked noses and big noses are lovely and wonderful, and representing them is important! representing non eurocentric features in art is really important! (something i’ve also regularly talked abt like… i and many ppl again have made several posts talking abt how ppl will just draw eurocentric features and slap on some brown color and think that’s enough and it isn’t! that’s a problem too, when ppl don’t diversify their facial features and stick to only eurocentric ones, or change diverse features on existing characters into more eurocentric ones. like. these are both problems!)

BUT overly exaggerating, for example, hooked noses, and pairing them with scowls or monstrous imagery etc has a history of being used in racist and oppressive ways. over exaggerating thin eyes or wide lips or eurocentric gendered features (bc of how gender is radicalized) can be hurtful! it’s not abt the feature itself, but the context surrounding it. it hurts no one to look at racist caricatures and make sure you aren’t emulating them with your art. and if your art DOES look like those caricatures… that’s a problem!!!

#quasartalks #racism #caricature #caricatures #fandom crit #fandom critical #don’t rb

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whitesparrows97 · 5 years

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A Thousand Springs – Part 4

Pairing: BTS x Reader/OT7 x Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3.4K

Previous / Next

(picture credit: photograph by Mok Jung Wook for TIME Magazine)

After some time you had moved back to your room to pack some essential things. Taehyung had promised you that they would buy you anything you needed, too. But you didn’t want to burden them any more than you already did. That they took you in and gave you security was more than you could ask for.

When you got back into the living room, you realized that Alison wasn’t with the others. Jin seemed to notice your searching look and explained that he had brought her back to her room so she could rest there.

“We’ll keep someone nearby to look after her,” Namjoon said as you dropped onto the sofa.

“You have people working for you?” you asked suspiciously. You had no idea what you had gotten yourself into. Was it possible that the seven men were part of a gang? Or maybe even part of the Mafia? You didn’t know anything about that, except that a lot of people died pretty quickly.

“Of course,” said Namjoon. “Not many, only a few, whom we trust unreservedly.”

“It seems you trusted David once as well.” It slipped out before you could do anything about it. There was a moment of unpleasant silence and you were afraid that you might have upset the men.

But you breathed a sigh of relief when Yoongi finally broke the silence. “Yes, and that was one of the biggest mistakes we could make.” He dropped down next to you on the small armchair and stared at a fixed point on the floor.

“Why is that?” You didn’t know if it was smart to push the subject further. But you wanted to know what their connection was with David, since he was apparently a true psychopath.

It was Namjoon again who answered you. Apparently he seemed to be the leader of the group. “Let’s discuss this as soon as we get home.”

You wanted to protest, now would be as good a time as any. But when you opened your mouth, his gaze made you quickly close it again and look to the ground.

“Can I say goodbye to Alison for a moment?” you asked quietly.

“She’s asleep and won’t hear you,” Jin interjected. “You should let her recover. The procedure of forgetting takes all your strength. The longer she sleeps now, the better she will be when she wakes up.”

“I won’t wake her, but I don’t want to go without having said goodbye,” you insisted. Jin sighed once briefly before nodding.

When you stepped into Alison’s room and carefully closed the door behind you, you were glad Alison was asleep. You wouldn’t know what lie you would have to tell her, why you wouldn’t and couldn’t live in the apartment for some time. So at least you had time to come up with a believable story.

Your best friend was still pale, probably even paler than before. But the thought that she wouldn’t remember anything about the past hours calmed you down. You had never wanted her involved in all this and you were glad that you could undo it. Or rather Jin, however he had managed it.

That was another question you noted in the back of your head and would ask as soon as Namjoon thought the timing was appropriate.

Whenever that would be.

You had never been a fan of big goodbyes, so you only carefully stroked Alison’s hair out of her face once and memorized her relaxed facial features. You didn’t know when you would see her next time and wanted to make sure you remembered her that way. And not crying and afraid with a blade on her neck.

By shaking your head you chased the pictures out of your head. Arriving at the door, you turned around again and whispered a ‘Sorry’ in Alison’s direction before you left the room.

∞ ∞ ∞

The drive was long and quiet. You didn’t know where the men lived and after a while you gave up trying to find out where you were. What was certain was that you had never been here before. This time you were a little better divided between the two cars so that you weren’t trapped in the middle between two men. Namjoon, who sat with you in the back seat, made you nervous, so that you didn’t dare to say anything.

Instead, you spent your time watching the landscape from the window. You had long since left the city behind and a quick glance at the clock on the instrument panel told you that you had been on the road for nearly an hour. You almost decided to ask how much longer it would take you when Hoseok slowed down and drove up a driveway.

You admired the… building in front of which you stopped. To call it a house would not really do it justice. But it wasn’t a mansion either, not quite. The black facade was broken through by orange-brown wood in some places. A few well-kept trees and bushes covered a little the view to the house, so that it was almost hidden.

As you climbed the few steps to the front door, you let your hand glide over the railing. Everything screamed that it was incredibly expensive. Another question appeared on your mental question list. The men could hardly be much older than you. How the hell had they gotten so much money? Just to be able to afford the Range Rover you would probably have to work a few decades. And that only if you lived very sparingly.

Not to mention the house and the other car. You had the unpleasant feeling that maybe the money hadn’t really come from an everyday job. Maybe they were assassins who had made a name for themselves in the scene over the last few years. If there was such a thing as a scene in this professional field at all. And if you could even call it a professional field. Maybe all this was just a plan and David had hired the men last night to secretly get you out of the way now. Everything else had been just a show and was just for everyone’s entertainment. Probably they met after the job and laughed about you and your naivety…

That’s exactly what your mother meant when she had said you had a blossoming imagination. She probably would have scolded you for a moment and given you a lecture about why you didn’t go home with strange men. But your mother wasn’t here and you never had the chance again to have one of her lectures.

Sighing, you entered the hall and were speechless. You didn’t know what you were expecting and why you were surprised. You could have imagined that it looked as noble inside as it did outside. Nevertheless, you were perplexed to see the white marble floor and the huge staircase leading up to the upper floor. Straight ahead at the end of the entrance area you could see through the large window front into the garden.

“Do you like it?” Jimin asked, who had stepped to your side and looked at you with amusement. You could only nod.

Your gaze slid further to the right, where a painting hung on the wall. You had to suppress a laugh as you walked towards it. “Is that you, Namjoon?” you asked amused, although you knew the answer. It was clearly a self-portrait, you assumed it was in the style of Impressionism.

A deep, short laugh came from behind you and you felt the warmth that emanated from him as he stepped behind you. “Yes, that’s me. Somewhat embarrassing, I know,” he admitted and almost sounded shy.

You just shook your head. “Not at all. The brushstrokes are incredible and the color harmony…” You digressed as you looked at the painting with a slight smile.

Your gaze fell into the lower right corner where you would have suspected a signature, but it was empty. You turned slightly to Namjoon and asked: “What’s the artist’s name? He’s great, reminds me of Cézanne.”

The grey haired one seemed to think for a moment. “Unfortunately, I don’t remember, it’s been a while,” he finally confessed.

You frowned. “A while ago? You still look up just as you did in the painting.”

Namjoon gently put a hand on your arm and led you away from the painting towards the window front.

“You are interested in art,” Taehyung asked, who had appeared on your other side.

You nodded. “Very much actually. I’m studying something in this direction and I am now in my last semester,” you explained and you could swear to see his eyes sparkle at this statement.

“You study?” Hoseok asked instead, who went before you and turned to you at the question.

“All I need is the final exams and then the thesis, then I’m done.”

“What exactly are you studying, Y/N?” Jungkook interfered and his dark brown eyes looked at you questioningly.

“Art and New Media. The course is very diversified, but roughly speaking it deals with art that was created in this and the last century.”

You had arrived at the windows and you lost yourself for a moment in the view of the garden. It was very spacious, which you wouldn’t have thought. Well-tended paths meandered through the green and led to a small building in the distance, which you could identify as a greenhouse. As you leaned a little to the right, you could see the corner of a pool connected to the terrace of the house.

“It’s wonderful,” you said and you noticed how breathless your voice sounded.

“We’re glad you like it,” Jin replied and smiled at you. Suddenly something seemed to invade him and he added: “You certainly haven’t eaten anything yet, have you?”

You shook your head.

“I’ll make you breakfast,” he said enthusiastically and turned around. “Or rather lunch,” you could hear him murmuring after he looked at his wristwatch.

“I’ll show you your room, Y/N,” Jungkook said, and before you could say anything, he pulled you back by the hand towards the stairs; your bag in the other hand.

“Not so fast, Jungkook,” you laughed as you stumbled over your own feet.

He immediately slowed down his pace and smiled at you apologetically. His thumb stroked the back of your hand at a regular pace and time seemed to stand still.

And that wasn’t meant metaphorically or figuratively, but literally. You had arrived at the beginning of the stairs and Jungkook had turned to you. You felt your heartbeat, regularly, but slower. Every single beat you felt hard in your chest, as if your heart was trying to jump out of your chest.

Your hand moved in slow motion as you pressed it lightly against the chest of the dark-haired man. You were astonished to see yourself, as if your hand no longer belonged to your body. Under the palm of your hand you could feel his heartbeat and a smile spread across your face as you noticed how fast it was beating.

“What is happening here,” you asked and were relieved when your voice came out at normal speed.

Jungkook let the bag sink from his hand to the floor and carefully stroked your cheek. You could feel the skin underneath turn dark red.

He didn’t answer your question and the moment was over.

Suddenly all the sounds you must have faded out before were back again. You heard Jin handling pots in the kitchen and one of the boys laughing. Your heart was racing in your chest and your cheeks were glowing as Jungkook released his hand from your cheek and picked up the bag from the floor. You were happy when he climbed the stairs in front of you and you had a moment to breathe in deeply.

It wasn’t the first time you felt like time was slowing down. That was perfectly normal when you were in a dangerous situation and the adrenaline kicked in. But right now hadn’t been such a situation and it had felt different. It reminded you of the trance-like state that you were in yesterday after meeting David. Except that this was much more pleasant and you didn’t want the moment to go by.

Jungkook led you into the left wing, where many doors were coming from a relatively narrow hallway. The left wall of the hallway was covered by a narrow, long window that reached almost to the end of the hallway. When you looked through it, you could see into the entrance hall.

“These are our bedrooms,” he told you, and with a gesture of his finger he gave the names of the boys to explain to you which room belonged to whom. The first room belonged to Taehyung and the one beside it to Jimin. The rooms of Jin, Hoseok, Namjoon and Yoongi were in the right wing, as Jungkook explained to you.

You had arrived at the penultimate door and Jungkook opened it. “This,” he began, making an inviting arm movement. “Is my room.”

Carefully you stepped in and looked around with restraint.

“It’s small, but the view makes up for it again, I think.”

“It’s…” you started, but again you couldn’t find a proper word for it.

The opposite wall had been completely replaced by windows and gave a view of the city in the distance. Light fog added a mystical touch to the view and you were embarrassed to notice your mouth had dropped open in awe. You quickly closed it, but you knew he had seen it thanks to the slight grin on Jungkook’s face.

“Jungkook, it’s so beautiful.” You could finally say. “And beautiful doesn’t even hit it. It’s just breathtaking.”

“Then you should see your room,” the dark-haired man said laughing and took your hand again to lead you to that room. You were a little disappointed because you hardly had time to look around and were too busy enjoying the view.

It turned out that your room was the one next to it, the last one in the hallway. You didn’t know why you were so excited. But when Jungkook let you step forward to open the door, you noticed your hands were trembling.

Carefully you pressed the door open and entered your new room. Immediately you noticed that it was about as cut as Jungkooks room, only mirrored.

The big bed stood on the right wall and you had to pull yourself together, not to cuddle up in the soft-looking blankets. Only now did you realize how tired and exhausted you were. You tear the view away from the bed and let it wander through the room. The back wall was also replaced by three large windows and on the windowsill you could see cushions inviting you to watch the sunset up close.

To the left of the window in the corner stood a couch that looked at least as comfortable as the bed and was decorated with pillows and blankets. As you turned your gaze to the left wall, you noticed two doors.

“Where do the two doors lead to?” you asked the dark-haired man.

He seemed to have watched your reaction to the room as a slight blush formed on his cheeks as you looked at him.

“One leads to the adjacent bathroom, the other to your wardrobe,” he replied when he had caught himself again.

“I have my own bathroom and a walk-in closet?” you asked, slightly shocked. “I don’t even have enough clothes to need that much space.”

Jungkook laughed quietly and you asked yourself why. “Don’t worry, Noona. Look at it first.”

You didn’t know what he meant by that, but before you could ask, he hinted to leave.

“I’ll leave you alone for a moment. Jin will be ready to eat in about a quarter of an hour. Then just come down,” he explained and gave you a shy smile before he left the room and closed the door behind him.

You take a quick breath before you opened the first of the two doors. Behind it lay the walk-in wardrobe and you were left breathless at the sight. Now you knew what Jungkook had meant.

The room was small, actually rather a narrow, short hallway. However, all walls were equipped with high shelves and so there would be enough space for clothes.

At least theoretically.

If jackets and blouses would not hang from the poles and shirts and trousers would not be neatly folded to occupy the shelves.

Carefully you stroked over the material of a dark blue blouse and had to sigh, so soft it felt on your skin. The name on the label didn’t tell you anything, and neither did those in the other clothes. You opened the drawer of a narrow chest of drawers and felt the heat rise directly into your cheeks. You were glad you were alone in the room and none of the boys could see you lifting the pink lace string with your pointed fingers.

Oh god. If you thought about that the boys had bought you the underwear themselves, you would redden a nuance more, if that was even possible. And they would know that you would wear it, that was almost the worst thing about it. You had to admit that you usually put more emphasis on comfort than sexiness. Not that it was completely unnecessary anyway, since no one but you has ever seen it.

When you went on thinning through the drawer with your head bright red, you only found this kind of underpants, but at least there were some that had a more subtle color. The bras in the drawer below were not much better. What surprised you the most was that they knew your size. Sure, it had been a bit strange with the clothes, but that could have been just coincidence.

But the fact that they knew your bra size really concerned you. It was just too... weird. You let the underwear be underwear and left the room to look at the bathroom.

It was a strong contrast to the other two rooms and now you noticed what had been bothering you the whole time.

The mansion was old.

You could recognize it by the large staircase and the long corridors. There were also some small things, like the paintings that were made on antique and added even more years to the building. Even though many attempts were made to modernize the villa by completely renovating the façade, or by adding many window fronts to the bedrooms, the bathroom revealed that the villa had to be very old.

Carefully you entered the bright room. Here, too, much had been modernized, but the black and white floor tiles and the stucco on the ceilings lent the room a certain reverence. Only now did you notice the high ceiling from which a small golden chandelier hung. Even the feet of the bathtub were made of decorated white ceramic so that they matched the stucco.

Again the question came to your mind how the seven men could afford all this. While you were happy to have enough money at the end of the month to afford you something decent to eat, they lived here in a frenzy.

You were about to leave the bathroom when your gaze fell on your reflection. In disbelief, you stared at yourself just for a moment before taking a step forward to look at yourself better.

You hardly had anything to do with the person who stood in the bathroom of the club scared to death yesterday. Your cheeks were slightly reddened, probably a remnant from the discovery of underwear.

But you couldn’t deny how... healthy you looked. You couldn't think of another word for it except that you were practically beaming. Your eyes seemed somehow darker and deeper than usual and your posture had also improved. Until this morning you had mostly walked around with your shoulders raised, hoping to stay at the most inconspicuous.

Now you stood upright and with your head slightly raised. You were more confident, but that was not the word you were looking for. Suddenly it hit you, the word suddenly appeared before your eyes, as if someone had blown away the fog it surrounded.

You were happy.

With the knowledge and a smile on your lips you turned around and made your way down.

Written 2019-2021. Do not copy, translate or repost without permission.

#bts x reader #poly!bts x reader #bts x you #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts smut #bts #athousandsprings

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saltycharacters · 5 years

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How do you come up with such original designs (for humans and creatures? I can easily come up with diverse personalities for my characters but when it comes to designing their looks I melt into a puddle of disappointment

God, this ask is about 2 years old, no joke. I’m so, SO ashamed that I never got around to replying to this- I had a super detailed explanation planned, but I kept forgetting about it and putting it off aaand yep. i am so sorry man. I’m not even sure if you’ll ever see this lmao. But I feel bad about leaving it as is, so better later than never.

I’ve mentioned this here and there, but my main strategy for character design is juxtaposition- finding shapes in an animal or an object or etc and replacing it for something similarly shaped. Here’s a basic example of what I mean:

I use this method more than any other for character creation, as you can see

And this doesn’t only work for animal characters! It can be done with humans/humanoids too!

And you know how practice makes you better at things? Well fun fact, you can actually train yourself to become more creative and get the ideas that you like! It just takes time. Over the years, I’ve actually taught myself to to notice shapes more frequently in things, and that’s why I keep getting so many ideas. And with enough practice, you can actually get pretty abstract with your juxtaposition- Take my character Bail for example, whom I gave eyeball fingers.

Believe it or not, I didn’t just put them there randomly. I actually had a thought process behind it and it went something like this:

Of course, this isn’t the only way to make characters, and it’s definitely not everyone’s aesthetic. So here are a few other tips I can give you, in regards to character design!

For animals

-Change/create an animal character into a really weird, obscure or exotic animal. Have a lot of cats and dogs? Want to change it up? Think out of the box! I turned my cat character into an Australian quoll, and it rocked! I actually have a lot of pictures of weird animals saved into my phone for this reason. It really helps keep things interesting- plus, it’s super fun and a great drawing prompt!

-Combine animals. This is advice I’ve given to a few of my friends before and they seem to really like the idea, so I definitely recommend taking a few animals and mashing them together. Not even just two animals- try three, or four, or more. I actually find mixing at least 3 or more animals produces more satisfactory results.

-Have a lot of animal characters and not enough people? Turn some critters into humans! I’m currently having a blast redesigning old ocs like this, because I tend to make more funky creatures than funky humans and it really helps. You can also do the reverse- go from human to animal.

For humans

-Do you find yourself thinking that your human characters look too similar/boring? What can you do to change that? Ironically, a lot of times this answer is very simple. Visibly diversify them. Give them different skin colors, for one. Hair is a given, but specifically try to vary between straight hair and wavy hair and curly hair. And give them vastly different hairstyles. Don’t be afraid to look them up. Skin features such as freckles, moles, vitiligo, scars, acne, facial hair, etc can really help make your character(s) stand out as well. Additionally, give them visibly different noses. Chins. Head shapes. Body shapes. Give some wheelchairs. Give some prosthetics. Etc etc- Like i said, this all seems super obvious, but I get people telling me they think their ocs are too mundane and I glance at them, and they look identical- save for the varying hairstyles and clothes. We’re use to seeing such diversity in real life to begin with- even as you pass by people on the street, most don’t look anything alike. So of course you’re gonna find something lacking when the only distinguishing factor you use is hair and clothes. Really, don’t be afraid to make them as different from each other as possible!

-Also, remember that juxtaposition thing I talked about? Use it for clothes. Design some really funky clothes. I actually based my ocs around some really cool outfits I made with this method, and it’s very useful for creating humans.

And lastly, the second most used method (by me) for character creation is to just doodle- I doodle a lot and often I accidentally create something I really like. Start with a headshape, I usually go with circles. Keep adding random things to it, and eventually, you may end up with something super cool.

Even though I doubt the original asker will read this, I do hope others find some of this advice useful!

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dr-astormylasthurrah · 4 years

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spam’s character design tips!

(various designs I’ve done! adopt characters belong to their owners, I only include them here as examples and claim no current ownership.) *disclaimer: it was 9 pages before i added pictures so i’m not inaccurate

If you would rather read this as a Google Document, please click here! (The document has more examples as well!)

Hey! My name’s Spam and I write Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah! You may also have seen my art for various stories and users around the Internet, including RATS: 252 Chances at Redemption and the Alca Ronpa series! You may ALSO also have seen my character designs, including those for ASLH as well as certain characters in Alca Ronpa and Kill the Joker: AnotheR Game! I sell adopts fairly frequently as well and have miscellaneous designs floating around the web, so I figured I may as well write something about my process. This is mostly oriented towards human OCs! So hopefully this helps someone!!

Before starting this guide, I’d like to give credit to gaiacseas/gokuhara’s ��How I Design OCs: Do’s and Don’ts”! When I was designing the ASLH cast, I found myself coming back to this guide again and again. A lot of my points are the same as theirs, but I talk a bit about my own process, especially when it comes to characters that I revamp and redesign.

All uncredited art was done by me, including character designs. Characters belong to their respective owners. All other art is credited.

So let’s get started!

CONCEPTS

The first thing I’m going to say is that my character designs, especially those for myself, take absolutely FOREVER. I usually go through many, many pages of concepts and color tests before I find something I’m satisfied with. It’s a long and very constructive process, and if I’m designing a character for someone else, it can take weeks before we can find something we’re both satisfied with.

Alexei Ilyich Bazhanov, ASLH’s SHSL Birdwatcher, was a design-first character, meaning that I came up with his design first and built his personality around it. Although to be fair someone who constantly wears a feathery halfmask in public is inevitably bound to be kind of dramatic, so there’s only so many ways his personality couldn’t be influenced by his design. However, his design took a bit of a downgrade from his initial design to his current iteration, largely because of his initial design’s similarity to Tatsumaru Harai, ASLH’s SHSL Kabuki Actor.

In Tatsumaru’s concept sketch, you can also see the inspirations I cited for their design! I don’t consume much media, so the characters I cite as reference are often OCs in my friends’ stories. Here, I cited Minami Tachibana (Danganronpa: Dead on Arrival), Alix Murasaki (Ultimate Danganronpa: Supernova at Sea), and… Rhanahad Electricrone (Alca Ronpa 2), for some reason. I… actually don’t remember how or why any of those influences connect to Tatsumaru at all? Actually, for almost all of the ASLH characters, I scribbled down some notes on design influences and proceeded to ignore them. So maybe don’t listen to me actually. But design influences are good! Just don’t straight up copy them.

ANYWAY, as you can see, Alexei and Tatsumaru both had longish coats with balloon pants. However, I had better reason to keep these traits for Tatsumaru than Alexei, because kabuki acting actually uses these elements in its costumes. Thus, it made more sense to change Alexei’s design, although I do think that he would still actually wear that original outfit. It’s very himcore.

The point is that this ended up in many, many more drafts of concept sketches until I found something I was satisfied with. Like, six pages. It was kind of insane. It’s worth it in the end to make a polished product, though!

BODIES

(Admittedly, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best when it comes to drawing distinct body types. It’s a weakness of mine that I’m getting better at, but I’m still not great at it.)

The #1 tip I can give here is to use shape language! This is what people use in pretty much all Western cartoons - ever think about how hard it would be to take Bill Cipher seriously if he was a circle? gaiacseas goes over shape language and silhouettes in far more depth in their tutorial, so I really advise looking at it! The basics are:

CIrcles/ovals convey softness and gentleness

Rectangles convey solidity and strength

Triangles convey sharpness and distrust

Combine shapes to modify the image your character conveys!

Also, just a tip: if you’re designing a cast of characters, please don’t just make them all the same body type! In real life, if you got any random sample of people, they’re not all going to be the same body type. Diversifying your body types helps a lot to distinguish characters from each other, too. Imagine if all of these characters had the same proportions as each other - even though they all have distinct outfits, you would have a much harder time perceiving them as different people.

If you’re going to draw characters of a body type you’re unfamiliar with, good for you! But first, take the time to look up guides on how to draw those body types. Studying real people also helps a lot to understand the vast varieties of body types. Just look at this picture of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from the 2016 Rio games - there’s already a ton of variations in “muscular” depending on what their sport is, and each athlete is optimized to their sport! It’s like that for literally everyone on Earth with literally every body type. There’s millions of ways to be skinny (bony? lean? malnourished?) or fat (most fat around their stomach, arms, legs?) or muscular (tall like a basketball player, dense like a weightlifter?) so make them count!

Also consider making characters with disabilities! My commentary on this as an abled person is fairly limited, but I will say to please note that what you think you know about disabilities is not necessarily true. This is in regards to their experiences having a disability, but can even apply to things you don’t think about - the wheelchairs most wheelchair-bound people use are not usually medical wheelchairs, for example. Research!!

On a related note, please don’t make racial caricatures or draw all your characters with the same facial features. People of specific ethnicities tend to (but not always) have certain features that are common to people across a regional area, but that’s no excuse to veer into drawing in the same way old racist cartoons are illustrated in. Again, there’s plenty of guides to help with learning about these! Or just look at the people around you and draw real people as practice. You’ll find the world is much more diverse than you think.

And speaking of references!! I’ve seen a lot of really good guides these days for drawing different body types and features! Go check them out go check em go!!

sdkay’s guide on drawing different facial structures (original post was deleted)

kenzandfriends’ guide on drawing fat people (original post was deleted)

nsfwbutts’ guide on drawing fat people (guide isn’t nsfw but their blog is so this is a reblog)

mel-lion’s guide on drawing black features

chuwenjie’s guide on drawing East Asian faces

“world of averages” - composite images of thousands of portraits of people from different places (re: certain facial features being common to certain ethnicities!)

calvin-arium’s guide on drawing characters in wheelchairs

Honestly if you’re looking for help just literally google “how to draw [character trait] and I GUARANTEE you there is a guide out there for you. While people not belonging to the demographic you’re drawing will probably not notice if you don’t portray groups accurately, those who are part of that demographic will be absolutely delighted.

MOTIFS

Motifs are a really neat way to make your character stand out in a crowd, especially if those motifs have meaning behind them! I mostly do this for adopts, but one of my favorite designs was Ophelia Zhang, a character I designed and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with.

She’s Medusa-inspired, as is obvious because of the snake motif on her jacket and the green hair/yellow eyes combination! Maybe you didn’t notice it until I pointed out, but now that I did, it raises intrigue about her character and her connection to the myth, doesn’t it?

Aside from Ophelia, most of my (own) characters aren’t very motif-heavy, but I like having common themes and patterns that run throughout their outfits at least. It just makes the outfit blend better. Some examples of this include Claude Bates, ASLH’s SHSL Violinist, and Chiyo Kumoshita, ASLH’s SHSL Cellphone Novelist.

Nonstandards are a great way of making a character Become Their Motif! Claude is based on snakes, specifically grass snakes - he’s got beady eyes, fangs, a grass snake pattern on his pants, and the combination of weird vesty jacket thing and striped shirt creates a belly scales effect. HOWEVER, he’s also got violin motifs! Most obvious are the f-hole patterns on his coat, but a more subtle thing is that his shirt has 5 stripes - a music staff (which sheet music is written on) is made of 5 lines!

(“so spam shouldn’t he have only 4 stripes on his shirt, for the 4 spaces on a music staff” shut up i realized i messed up his design too late. my orchestra director is going to kill me)

Chiyo, on the other hand, has a distinct cloud motif! This primarily is to match her surname (雲下 are the kanji for “clouds” and “under” respectively), but the other reason Chiyo has a cloud motif is because of ASLH itself - ASLH is loosely themed around the Shakespeare play The Tempest, and Chiyo, being ASLH’s protagonist, gets a “clear skies” motif. Neat!

OUTFITS

(“Incinerate” is the base for Puppet from Kill The Joker: AnotheR Game!)

There is SO MUCH that can be said about outfits and how I design them. The #1 tip I have is to look at what other people wear, and then decide what it is about that outfit you like so much! If you go somewhere where people are dressed differently from what you’re used to (a distant city or a foreign country), take notes! For me, some elements I come back to a lot include collared shirts, sweaters, oversized overdecorated overcoats, and cloud/sky patterning.

So here’s a little about what makes outfits distinct from each other!

Colors:

Bro this is SO IMPORTANT. There’s a lot that can be said about color theory, and gaiacseas says more than I do on the topic, but basically color conveys a lot about the character. Muted colors convey a muted personality, and brighter colors convey a brighter one! As gaiacseas says in their guide, however, this sets up a great way to subvert expectations about your character.

Protip! If you’re having trouble with a color scheme, just color pick from an existing picture! I don’t have any examples of this on hand, but I do know that sunset pictures are very yummy and I have a lot of pink/orange colored designs. Coincidence? I think NOT.

The number of colors you select is of course up to you, but personally, I don’t use too many individual colors for ease of creating reference images. Of course, realistically, no one’s going to wear clothes the exact same color as each other. Unfortunately for that realism, I am lazy and don’t want to color pick 10 colors, so this is how I live.

Layering:

This is the absolute #1 best way to build texture and silhouette in your characters! Step one, find a funky garment. Step two, find another funky garment. Step three, put them on top of each other. Step four, PROFIT.

The easiest garments to do this with is of course jackets, but they certainly aren’t the only garment that can be layered! Layering is just a matter of looking at clothes you would not usually wear together and going “I wonder what would happen if you wore this together?” In real life this is usually a disaster. But in the world of art and hypotheticals everything is fair game and NOTHING makes sense!

Patterns:

For when layers just don’t cut it! As far as patterns go, they could tie into motifs or just be a nice pattern. For example, Mal Jenkins is a painter, so the patterns on his sleeves, pants, and bag are based on Monet’s “Water Lilies”.

On the other hand, patterns could just be a pattern or recurring motif! The world is your oyster!

Materials/textures:

When combined with layering, clothes of different textures and weights can add a lot to a design! I mentioned before that I like designs with jackets, let’s look at a couple different hoodies! Featured here is Tristan McRae, ASLH’s SHSL Video Game Designer, and Hayato Kikuchi, Ultimate Parkourist (submitted to rebootmon’s Danganronpa: Zetsubou Panic!!).

You can see that Tristan’s jacket is made of much thicker material than Hayato’s, which is very baggy and loose. This already makes their designs a lot more distinct from each other! (They’re also wearing totally different colors so that helps too.)

Other textures I like to do include adding holes (like Spring from KTJ:ARG has holes in her coat), adding things onto fabrics (like Tsukino Chisaki, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has studs on her coat and boots), and adding visible stitching (like Brendan Valdez, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has patches on his coat).

Clothes:

Having a general idea of what clothes actually exist is a very good start! Such as:

Tops: t-shirts, collared shirts, long sleeve/short sleeve shirts, tank/tube tops, cold shoulder shirts, blouses, sheer mesh shirts…

Bottoms: Skirts, gym shorts, denim shorts, jeans (with and without holes), leggings, culottes, kilts...

Dresses: Prom dresses, casual dresses, ball gowns, formal full-length gowns…

Undergarments: tights, fishnets, garters, long socks, short socks, gloves, bras/bralettes...

Coverings: Hoodies, cardigans, overcoats, denim jackets, capes, ponchos, vests, suit jackets…

Shoes: Slippers, flip-flops, sandals, high heels, sneakers, athletic shoes, slip-ons, boots...

Accessories: Hats, barrettes, hair ties, jewelry, bags, headbands, belts, chains, suspenders, buttons, glasses...

So from there it’s just mix and match! Keep in mind the different styles of clothing as well - you can swap out things like collars and edges to create variety! There’s different types of boots, different types of skirts, different kinds of bags. The sky’s the limit!

No, I Meant Like Clothes Inspiration:

Oh. Again, keep an eye out for specific art inspirations! If you see a cool character design or outfit on social media, bookmark it! Just remember not to copy clothes exactly, because that’s called art theft! I have a storage Discord server where I keep screenshots and links of art and outfits I come across while scrolling social media.

I find that the best original outfits are a combination of different outfits. Take certain elements that you find cool in each outfit , then add a few elements of your own and stick them all together! It might take a few passes to work as cohesively as you’d like, but keep trying! The best outfits that take inspiration should look so seamlessly blended and original that they should only look like the references if you compare them to each other.

I also have a few characters inspired by songs, so sometimes I’ll incorporate the motifs of MVs for those songs into their outfits. I don’t really recommend this unless you’re 100% prepared to be called out on where the outfit came from, and I ESPECIALLY do not recommend lifting the outfit exactly. Again, that’s art theft.

Isaku Umitsu, my SHSL Kyudoka, is based on the Hitotsume-sama, Bun-chan, and Kulukulu characters from utaite Eve’s music videos Literary Nonsense and Outsider. Looking at them side by side, the inspiration is obvious, but when taken out of context, it shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind unless you’ve watched Eve’s videos 100 times (like I have) (take my computer from me please).

References:

As for references! Here’s just a couple that I found digging through my Tumblr!

My main blog’s fashion tag!

moatdd’s layering how-to! This changed my life when I saw it.

OSF Costume Rentals - period accurate clothing!

leaf-submas’s hat and skirt style guide, feat. Napstablook!

Jfashionmagazines - Japanese street fashion!

If your mutuals have fashion tags or pages, that’s a good place to dig through as well! They almost certainly have different styles than you do, so you’ll get exposed to a lot of different styles!

Outfits are a lot of fun and my favorite part of designing characters! Hopefully it will be for you too! :D

REDESIGNING CHARACTERS/NEW OUTFITS

Ever got a character design you love, but then decided you weren’t feeling anymore? Or got a character from someone you ended up hating? Or you found character art from 5 years ago and decided you hated it? YEAH ME TOO TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE!!

ASLH has four characters who were adopts: Ririka Kashizaki (SHSL Nail Artist), Sentarou Sekisada (SHSL Seat Filler), Hirono Ekyou (SHSL Oendan), and Ryouji Atsui (SHSL Caterer)! For a “complete from scratch redesign” I’ll be talking about Ryouji, who was converted from an attempt at design to a fantroll to an original design!

As you can see, I had a lot of trouble with Ryouji’s design. (It probably didn’t help that I didn’t finalize his personality until basically the prologue though lbr.) I didn’t really know what I was doing, and though I had the concept for the vibes I was shooting for, nothing seemed right. Around the same time, I bought an OC design from my friend Marti, and I was having so much trouble I was like “y’know what let’s just fuse the two”.

My process for redesigning OCs, especially when doing something like humanizing a nonhuman character, is to pick the certain traits I’d like to keep and change the rest. For Ryouji, the elements of his concept art I wanted to keep were parts of the outfit (the apron and vest) and the elements of the fantroll I wanted to keep were his eyebrow scar and the squares pattern on the jacket. Thus, when redesigning him, I made him have all of these elements! This was probably one of my favorite designs to make ever, and I’m really glad other people seem to like it too.

Weirdly enough, as soon as I finalized his design for his first reference, his personality almost immediately materialized. Which really just goes to show how much design can influence character personalities.

(Fun fact, drawing Ryouji’s reference was the first time I drew his final outfit, so I’m extremely grateful it turned out as well as it did.)

Other characters, like Hirono, only need a quick outfit touchup. I loved Hirono’s design already, and it fit with what I had in mind with her personality. All I did to change her was the same process I use to make any other outfit, see above. She’s an oendan, so she gets a hapi coat and school uniform… though, honestly, that original outfit is still super cute. I should draw it again sometime.

Most of the characters that I redesign as heavily as I did Ryouji are fangems and fantrolls that I buy from my friends, because I know that they understand my mighty need to redesign things. I try not to redesign adopts I get from other sources because I don’t know how the people I bought them from would feel about my editing their design too heavily; Sentarou and Ririka fall into these categories, so when I got them I mostly changed their outfits.

For me, it feels weird to redesign already-existing human OCs, but it’s also not impossible - Tristan, for example, used to be white. No I’m not going to show you the sketches for that and all you need to know is that it sucked, mostly because I was having a lot of trouble making him look nerdy but also nonthreatening. I think how he looks now is a good balance. If you ever get stuck redesigning a character, a race or gender swap (if either is possible tastefully) can go a really long way, and can even subvert expectations about a character! Just keep in mind dynamics and messages as well - if you have a strong violent woman and go “hey she should be trans”, that’s really not the best stereotype you would probably want to display in your work. Be mindful!

2015 (og design) => later 2015? (RWBY AU) => 2017 (AR3) => 2018 (DE:OPH

CAST BALANCE: DESIGNS

I wasn’t going to talk about this but then I decided I was gonna talk about it! I mean this is kinda a guide for Danganronpa characters, but this applies to any cast that is presented in a group. The characters in ASLH fall into a few different categories:

Created for beta ASLH: Chiyo, Amal, Tsukino, Ririka, Kanemori, Tristan, Tiana, Claude, Iris, Aster

Created for current ASLH: Ryouji, Sentarou, Alexei, Tatsumaru

Preexisting characters: Hirono, Brendan

The largest problem I had putting all the cast members together was revising outfits so that, as seen with Alexei and Tatsumaru above, designs wouldn’t be too similar. For the most part, I had vague ideas of what I wanted for each appearance; even the characters whose designs materialized fully-formed (like Tiana and Brendan) were edited slightly for cast cohesion.

I wish I could say I was responsible in developing all 16 characters’ designs at once so I could keep an eye on their design consistencies, but I would be lying. Instead, I finalized them and then posted them one by one. This was a double edged sword. One, I couldn’t go back and readjust colors or designs without making a whole new reference (which I actually did for Tatsumaru). However, because I was able to take a birds-eye view of my cast, I could see what design elements I needed more of - ESPECIALLY for color scheme! You’ll notice that a lot of the first row in my cast pic is very dark and grey-dominant, so I made a conscious push to include more colors in the second row of characters.

My one regret is not doing more talent-related designs. For a majority of the ASLH cast, you wouldn’t be able to tell their talent from appearance alone. In some cases this would have been impossible anyway (how do you convey to a Western audience a SHSL Cellphone Novelist through design?), but the only really distinct and obvious talent related designs are probably Tatsumaru (who probably doesn’t count because kabuki acting is maskless); Claude; Iris Sumitama, the SHSL Honors Student; and Kanemori Shionaga, the SHSL Football Player. Can you guess who they are?

Also, Alexei’s outfit should have been more extra. I still regret not making it so.

TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ

Go look at gaiacseas’ thing.

I do at least a page or two of concept art before settling on a single design.

Pay attention to body types!

Motifs can make a character look really cohesive and thematic.

Pay attention to what you like in outfits, too!!

Color schemes give an at-a-glance idea of your character’s personality.

Layering creates distinct silhouettes and can be done with more than just jackets!

Varying materials and textures makes the same garments look distinct from each other.

Making interesting outfits is as easy as mixing and matching garments.

Find outfit inspiration, but don’t plagarize!

To redesign characters, take the elements you like and shift everything else until it looks the way you want it to!

Balancing cast designs is a tricky process; going one-by-one is possible but has its ups and downs.

A LAST NOTE

In general, when you make a character whose life is different from yours - especially those belonging to marginalized communities - for the love of GOD please do some research about the experiences those communities have. It is a very bad idea to make them into a mouthpiece for your views of the groups. (SHSL Activists that are portrayed as unreasonable SJW strawmen irritate me to no end.) If you don’t feel you can portray a character respectfully, through either drawing or writing them, either a) research and listen to people of these groups so that you can or b) don’t do it, and maybe reevaluate yourself and figure out what about making this character makes you so uncomfortable.

Which isn’t to say that you have to be 100% perfect at everything, of course. In general, so long as the misinterpretations are unintentional, people belonging to the groups you try to represent tend to be pretty happy that you’re trying at all. You have no idea how happy I am to see agender representation in fanganronpa casts, especially because the Danganronpa OC scene likes to stick to hard gender binary balances. So it is worth it if you want to try it!

GOOD LUCK

And happy character creating!

If you enjoyed this document, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi or checking out my commissions! Or, of course, read Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah.

#tutorial #art ref #tips #character development #danganronpa #danganronpa oc #dr #fanganronpa #fangan #my art #my ocs #not aslh #spam speaks #long post #q

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rwby-analysis · 5 years

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Do you think we could ever get CRWBY to overhaul the character designs? I love the show but it has a major problem with the women all having the same face and only body diversity being height and bust. They don't have to change the show's style completely but they're no longer as handicapped and could actually diversify the women if they tried.

Actually they are trying that. I think one of the animators talked about it in a behind the scenes episode when they were talking about Lil' Miss Malachite, but it seems to be quite a struggle to have different body types on the show, but they are trying to improve on that and find solutions for it. The issue is that they are a bit bound to what they created in Volume 1, when they had way less possibilities for diverse character designs. They can’t just change the body type of existing characters completely, just as they can’t really change their facial features too much. Bringing more diversity into already existing characters would mess with the continuity of their design, and I get why that would be a struggle. But as a fandom we should absolutely politely voice that we would love to see more diverse body types in a future.

#ask

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theaveragekenyan · 5 years

Text

Blinded by your Grace...

In terms of Europe’s best looking Women (Fittest Birds), this is how I would rate them within a top 5.

1 = Sweden (standard stereotype, but essentially any of those Nordic Scandinavian hotties)

2 = Republic of Ireland (the jet black or fiery red hair and the feckin accent)

3 = Italy (oodles of class and they can knock up an amazing salad in seconds)

4 = Great Britain (not the ones faggin it outside school waiting for their kids)

5 = Australia (Eurovision Song Contest Rules)

Of course, the above list is shamefully discriminatory and sexist, it’s not even a bit of fun anymore #metoo, I just I enjoy the stereotypical nature of it all, #bantz I believe is the excuse these days.

I just did a Google search of the above topic, except I widened it to ‘worldwide best looking women’ and the top hits include the above 5 countries within their lists, except new countries like Brazil, Philippines, Venezuela, Thailand and USA are added, well done to those countries, excellent DNA’ing.

So, something I’d like to point out, NO African countries feature in the lists.

Ok, there was one list that included Angola, but that was the only African country featured in just one list from many.

In the featured countries, NO black faces represent their beauty, Brazil is about as dark as you’re going to get, but essentially there was no recognition of diversity from their respective country. Each country’s ‘most beautiful face’ is depicted by a “typical” comfortably indigenous (whatever that represents) white looking woman from their country, sorry Archie, Naomi and Nathalie, but you’re not the considered look of Britain and that also is same for any other country with diverse genetics.

The world has proliferated so much these days, so for example, what does a British woman look like? That’s of course my liberalism shining through, but unfortunately for the majority of people in the UK, they still consider Victoria Beckham or Fiona Bruce as their default British Women, sorry no blacks, browns or yellow’s please, we’re British.

When I’m back home in the UK, I especially like to study the Black women I see, I like to see how they compose themselves, how they talk and especially how they look. I know this sounds super creepy, but this is of course as I live in Kenya, so I like to see how the women compare to what I have here.

The main reason for this is that Kenyan women are truly beautiful.

Now I come from a very small village in the UK and from the three schools I attended, they all represented very typical demographics for rural England.

Primary School = 40 children - 0 BAME.

I was the brownest in the school, although we did have three children of Indian origin move into the village, but not in my school year, they took over the village shop, obviously.

Secondary School = 500 children �� 3 BAME

Upper School – 1000 Children – 10 BAME

In each case, roughly about 1% were, you know “one of them”

Now I know times have changed and that area has become more diversified, but back in the late 80’s, I grew up with pretty much no other interesting faces other than pale zitty white ones.

It wasn’t until I moved to London in 1997 that opened my eyes to such a variety of faces and furthermore when I moved to Johannesburg in 2011 when I saw the full concentration of South African Women, and it was an eye opener to say the least.

I remember walking around Sandton City Mall and thinking to myself, in such high concentration, this must be where the best looking African Women on the continent are. Then I moved to Kenya and realized there are beautiful looking women everywhere you go.

I’m think it’s fairly safe to say, without any research or any factual evidence sought that my next assumption is correct. Kenyan Women’s beauty stems from a gene pool that, on the whole, has had little genetic dilution.

For many years, most of the reproduction has remained inter-tribal and only in recent years has outer-tribal reproduction become more acceptable. So, identifying features and characteristics have remained particular.

You see a lot of defining tribal looks and characteristics, that with a keen eye, can determine where the person originates, whether it be Western, Coastal, Central, Northern or Southern. This is a game my wife loves to play.

Yes, this happens in certain cities in England like Brighton, Liverpool, Bristol etc, but it’s largely down to make-up, clothes and style defining a look, rather than a type of nose or eye shape, I mean perhaps a “big gob” in Newcastle, but that’s about it.

It was only until I came to Africa that I noticed how many different skin shades there are. From Albino right through to dark blue-black, there’s a colour for everyone.

Sadly though, many Kenyans believe a lighter skin is more beautiful, so skin lightening creams and treatments have become a thing and have generated an overall negative effect on skin tone empowerment.

Most of the billboards here, featuring ladies, are almost white. They are presented with a polished skin, highlighted and dodged, removing just about all of their darker tones.

Therefore, darker girls grow up thinking they’re not as attractive, they’ll have less career opportunities, they won’t get the best men and so on. This then creates a troubling discriminatory outlook, which occurrs on a daily basis, not just in Kenya, but throughout Africa.

However, when it comes to Kenyan Women being attracted to men, there’s one particular skin tone many find appealing, the white one.

There are plenty of white men in Kenya, myself included who’ve seen the Kenyan beauty and thought, Well Jambo!

I’m not being modest when I say that my partner and I have an equal amount of attractiveness, (she’s way hotter than me) we’re of a similar age and have all the classic similarities to have fallen in love, but when looking around in Kenya you start to see many other couples where their...well...their similarities must be very unique to them.

I’m talking about “Sugar Daddies”, of course I am.

I love to see these couples as they are clearly so happy together.

He has a smoking hot-assed chick pushing his shopping trolley, whilst she can add into that trolley whatever the freak she wants, because she ain’t paying, PARTY!!!

It's so blatant and obvious what the arrangement is, yet many people find it embarrassing or jocular. People definitely like to judge and be jealous, I prefer to just give a little condescending nod and wink showing nothing but pure respect.

We’re talking 70-80 year old men with 25-30 year old women. The men are wearing their cardigans and orthopedic sunglasses, whilst the women are dressed like an extra from a Jay-Z promo, when in fact, of course, she should be wearing a nurse’s uniform. You’ll see them in restaurants staring into space as he sips on his Tusker, whilst she’s avoiding eye contact from all the younger playboys drooling over her.

Of course, it’s not just the white blokes that get to play Sugar Daddy. Many young Kenyan women find attraction in older men with a closer skin tone to theirs.

Again, for the women, this is purely down to the money and for men the sex, the perfect arrangement, everybody wins.

The older men are called “Sponsors” and they provide anything from Cars and Houses to Ugali and Cheap Booze and there exists a variety of financial classes within. It’s the polygamous society of Kenya that flexes its muscle, and I find it fascinating how it completely goes against everything the average Kenyan preaches in church, but then again the average Kenyan is just as big as the biggest hypocrite in the world.

Kenyan’s love stereotypes, that’s because for the majority of the time the stereotypes are completely correct.

The stereotypically looking Kenyan woman for a white guy is slim, petite, peachy butt-ocks, anti-gravity boobs, not too short and bearing mildly western facial features.

This type of woman is known as “Muzungu Bait”.

It’s not clear how the Kenyan women discover they are “Muzungu Bait”, perhaps there’s a “Finishing School” for this type of lady, but make no mistake there is a look and any lady possessing such features knows they have a permit to flirt with white men.

In the opposite stereotype, It can be said that, Kenyan men generally prefer a heavier lady.

I feel sorry for the chubbier, larger girls, I can only assume they have no right to flirt with white guys and they are the ones who can only be taken by the Kenyan men.

One comment I regularly hear, is that white men come to Kenya and steal the best looking women.

Steal, STEAL???, like the women have been kidnapped and are being held hostage. It’s such a ridiculous and humungous insult to women, it’s shocking.

I mean the fact we can cook, clean, and tell stories about mid-nineties heavy metal should never be overlooked.

I think what is it though, to the average Kenyan, Women are considered property, something that’s purchased. I know this has a lot to the doury marital system of buying women with animal livestock, but mostly women are treated as property, or 6 cows and 4 goats in most instances. So perhaps when a white man talks to a lady on her own level and doesn’t feel the urge to treat her in such a proprietary way, then I’m sure it has to have an appeal.

There is a downside though and a fascinating murder case is currently in the news and it’s not the first time such a murder has taken place. Now though, Kenyan media outlets can see views, likes and share values in real time therefore they can quantify a news story and suck it until it’s dry, so that explains why the current ‘Praying Mantis’ story is so accessible, because everybody wants a piece of it.

Unlike the Kenyan News agencies, I won’t go down the illegal route of naming and shaming and spilling out every detail rendering any Jury Court irrelevant, but this is how the story went.

Rich White Man murdered by his younger Kenyan Wife with possible involvement from her associates.

This is not the first time this has happened and not the last time.

It happens enough for it to be almost like another air strike in the middle east, erm yes, how many properties? which tribe was the woman? how much money is involved? where do they live? Sadly, the taken life of the man is overlooked and the story just fades away until the next replica story comes along. It’s not just Rich White Men though, Rich Black Men disappear as well, you see the connection? Let’s just say their are many wealthy Kenyan widows getting away with murder.

Sadly, the average Kenyan has a different outlook to women, it is changing, but still, women are viewed here as second class, need to obey, generally a subordinate creature. Yet, they are the baby makers, the food providers, the water carriers, the planners and the total backbone of Kenyan society.

I think the average Kenyan needs to be far more respectful and understand just how beautiful the women are in this country. I can 100% vouch for that, all I got to do is hope I don’t end up hidden in a septic tank one day.

0 notes

zak-animation · 5 years

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Into the Wolf’s Den: Speaking with Golden Wolf Studios

After sending an email to Golden Wolf Studios a few weeks ago, I received a response from Henry Purrington, head animation lead for the studio. He manages the student outreach, and mentioned how he would be ‘more than happy to help’ with my assignment. Over several emails, we discussed meeting up in person and arranged a date and time for me to head into London and get a tour of the studio.

This was an amazing experience, and in the process, I was able to get some great insights into the animation industry. Walking into Golden Wolf reminded me that this was just an animation studio, run by people. The ‘first thing you’ll notice’, Henry said as he opened the doors, ‘is that we’re all just people’. And it’s true, it was just a collection of people sitting behind their Apple Macs, working intently on their projects.

I was lucky enough to receive a tour of the studio, as Henry walked me around the various rooms and explained how it's a tight-knit community, and that the team works best when they feel ‘at home’ in the studio. The studio itself maintains a level of minimalist elegance with a monochrome black and white design, mixing smooth orange lights with a wooden interior that looks more like a bar and hangout area than an actual workspace.

After being shown around the studio, Henry and I grabbed a cold refreshing Diet Coke and sat down to discuss their work in more detail. Whilst I couldn’t record the interview, I was able to write down our discussion. We spoke about the animation industry as a whole, how advertising is changing to be much more subversive than before and the importance of a showreel. This was an excellent experience, and I’ve got plenty of information to present for our Industry Roles presentation in a few weeks time. I’ve presented the discussion below.

The Interview

Hello! Firstly, thank you so much for having me. Unfortunately, my team couldn’t make it today, so I’m a bit of a lone wolf. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Sure! I’m originally from the Isle of Wight and studied animation at the University of Portsmouth. My twin Tom and I then worked under director Ingri Ellingson in the animation department for a studio called ilovedust, before we branched out and formed our own thing with Golden Wolf here in Shoreditch, London.

And the rest is history! What’s it like to work in the studio?

Well, we all work as a team. We’re a non-directorial studio, so we work as more of a collective. We have directors, but it’s all in-house and our work all goes out as Golden Wolf. There’s a real team mentality, because everyone downstairs [points to the artists working in the below studio] can make great things on their own. We’re here because we want make stuff thats bigger and better than ourselves.

Wow, that’s a really cool approach. Do you have a personal mission statement for the studio?

That’s a great question. Well, we aim to create bold and youthful content. The focus is on fresh, but still youthful and dynamic content. Our audience is always ourselves - if we find it fun, then others will. We’re a design-focused team, and we think of ourselves an entertainment studio rather than advertising. Today, clients want to advertise on any and every screen they can get, all the time. At the same time, audiences will skip and ignore these ads. Back in the 90s advertisements were fun and exciting, but now we just wanna skip them.

We make little animations and sequences that are just entertaining, which just happen to be advertisements. It is subversive advertising, developing short content for social which is ultimately throwaway and short lasting, but its something that engages people. That’s the main goal.

Could you describe one of your typical workdays?

Yeah, but it’s different for everyone. There’s a structure, we have the art team and the production team. That split, that’s how most studios work. Production goes to the clients and find out what they want, and break it down to the artists. The artists then carry out the tasks and hits a deadline. There’s always a deadline, something to always work towards.

But me personally? I manage a few different projects, as I’m now older and bolder, my main job is to catch up on emails from freelance artists, interns and students. I manage the creative and social media stuff. Our projects are overseen and led by two animation directors, but our days will change. Everyone’s role changes, and everyone needs to know both preproduction and production skills.

So they have to be multi-disciplined, then. Could you give an example of these?

So we have around thirteen artists leading the charge, and each one needs to be able to handle both preproduction and production areas of a project: from character design and storyboards to final animation and even editing the project in post. The important thing is to keep things malleable and keep things flexible. We don’t want to overstretch anyone.

Typically, we have around six projects running at the same time. We have small teams that can then jump between different jobs, to collaborate with each other.

Something I’m really interested in is the use of social media for Golden Wolf. What is the role of social media within the studio? I loved the vertical project you made for Instagram in particular.

Yeah, so we pretty much use social media as an opportunity to explore different styles that we want to try. Whenever we have any downtime in the studio, we wanna try new things and fill that time. It’s a way of experimenting and trying new styles, because we’re all keen to work on different stuff. There’s a quick turnaround - working on advertising is a quick process and working on these short animated loops, for social media, really works well within this idea.

Typically, a project will last around eight weeks but for some specific clients like Nike, they want a fast turnaround. We’ll only get three or four weeks to complete a finished piece, and the briefs will be restrictive: fast paced, and with no time to play around. We have to play it safe.

We use it [social media] as an opportunity to try different things: like spinning camera moves. Social media is the opportunity for artists to explore, and gauge an instant reaction. It’s about building and diversifying the brand.

Plus, it’s these sort of experiments on social media that can really lead into the next project, and get the ball rolling on client work too. An internship experiment, where we got a few interns to make animated stickers of facial features. We put them on Giphy and they went viral and everyone thought they were really cool, we got photos in with people putting them on dogs and some guy even put them on the Mona Lisa. Giphy saw these and commissioned us to make some animated stickers of some original characters, called the Hoxton Zoo.

Wow, that’s really cool! I had no idea those started as intern experiments. Any words of wisdom for someone looking to join the studio in the future?

Just talent, skill and a willingness to work as a team. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, like you have today. You gotta remember that people are human, and to ask people for advice, or copy something that you love until you can make it your own - that’s the best advice, I think.

How long have you been an animation lead for?

Two and a half years, before that I was a 3D generalist in the studio. We’ve evolved from a design studio from ilovedust, and I’ve been working in the sector for over ten years. Our original job was to take the illustrations from the design department of ilovedust, and just make them move. Right now, we’ve expanded to be a lot bigger than that. We use a lot of freelancers, so it’s a real collaborative process. We are heavily design focused - the style frames should look cool, not just the movement.

As an animation student, something we often get told to do is work on our generalist skills rather than specializing in one area of the industry. As a professional yourself, would you say this is a good idea?

Hmmm, well in my experience it purely comes down to what you love doing. It’s long hours and hard work, and it’s a competitive industry! Really, just do whatever you enjoy the most. Be aware of the jobs and studios you want to work for, but if you like a little bit of everything go ahead and be a generalist. It’s up to you, but there is an appeal to having a range of skills.

As a studio, in particular, Golden Wolf hires artists who are efficient in a range of roles, but yeah as I said, typically an artist has to be able to work in both pre-production and production roles: so a storyboard artist or character designer and an animator, or editor. We’re all multi-skilled, we aren’t a large studio, just twenty or so people making cool shit.

But there’s only five of the artists downstairs that are from the UK, it’s actually hard to find talent here. Studios and colleges in the US teach and train artists to be up to an extremely high standard in animation and motion graphics work, some of their stuff is incredibly fluid and impressive, and it’s hard to find that sort of thing here in the UK.

But yeah, you need to be able to do character animation, clean up and animate different types of characters, with a range of line qualities. Golden Wolf in particular, we like to see finished frames and a short animation. Does it look good? That's what we’re more interested in. Every studio is different, but what it comes down to is can you do it well? It’s better to be told that you’re shit, and then work on it and do better.

Golden Wolf has worked on several music videos in the past, with Zedd and a few others, are these the type of projects you want to do more of in the future?

Music videos are hard, man. But we love the creative freedom they bring, and having an audiovisual track to make something to. With something like a music video, it’s hard to make one financially without making it a studio investment. With the Zedd video, we could only do the storyboarding in the studio and reached out to our friends in other studios and freelancers to make their own little piece of the puzzle. It’s modular storytelling, though I’m not sure if we made that up or if it’s already a thing. But anyway, we put all these little clips together from ourselves and our friends in the industry, and it was a nice way of making a video.

We always will do music videos if the studio has the time, and if we dig the track, but they aren’t for profit. At the moment, we’re actually really interested in the idea of exploring the potential of a short film, that means longer and more narrative-based work - which is something Golden Wolf has never done before.

One of our team members is looking into the role of an animation director, and wanted to ask if you have you personally had the opportunity to play the role of director in any projects?

So Golden Wolf is a non-directorial studio, meaning we have in-house directors under the name of Golden Wolf. So yeah, we do have directors. Art directors will be someone who directs and oversees the motion and informs the aesthetic of the project, working on style frames and making sure everything looks good. We do have that. Art directors need to be good at design as well as animation, and it’s a title that has to be earned. You have to have experience, having made loads of short films and their own personal projects.

So it’s sort of like a sensei - you have to earn the title.

Haha, yeah, exactly. You need to learn and cut your teeth, learn how things work and gain the experience. It’s an important role, and we all need to know if you can cut it as a director, or not.

At the moment, one of our projects is to build a showreel.

Yeah, what will sell you forever is your portfolio, your showreel. Honestly, grades don’t matter. It’s just the content that you come out of university with, that’s what we care about most. Your portfolio will sell you, and you can get client inquiries purely from that, if it's good enough. You need to put it on Instagram and build a following. You are your own brand, we are our own brand, and we’re constantly building it with content. Industry experience is good, but you can’t sell yourself through that alone - you need a good showreel.

Oh wow, really? I’d assumed what grade you came out of university with was crucial to your career.

Nah, it’s the showreel that will sell you. I don’t even know what any of the guys got downstairs grade wise. No one worries about that - it’s the showreel and portfolio. That’s the only thing we care about.

Any advice on building a showreel, given your industry experience?

Be concise, you just need to have your name and email address. We get seven thousand emails a year, purely inquiring about jobs. You need to catch someones attention within the first seven seconds - we see the showreels first, and then if we like it, we’ll go back and read the email.

My main advice? Find some music, and cut it to the beat. Treat the showreel as it’s own project, and remember that copyright isn’t important. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and if you find a track that is contemporary, but copyrighted - go with it. I remember asking a band that I liked for permission, and I went ahead and used it anyway. It’s not for commercial use - you aren’t making money from your showreel, so it’s fine.

A good rule of thumb is to find the track that you like first, that represents you and your work and edit based on that. As always, you should put your best shit at the beginning, the more mediocre stuff in the middle and finish on a strong piece of work to reward the viewer for staying that long. A showreel shouldn’t be over a minute, and ideally around 40-50 seconds. Our attention span is only lasting around eight seconds now due to social media, so you should cut a scene or sequence whenever you’re bored.

Students tend to love their work, and as a result, never cut. It’s long and boring, and honestly, I end up skipping most of them. You don’t need to put your name large in the credits, just make it easy for people to find you online. There’s no point making a fancy website, just have a good showreel with a popular and modern track. For us, that tends to be US hip hop artists, and EDM tracks: things that have a beat that you can cut to, and are fast-paced. We sometimes get showreels with jazz soundtracks, and we just mute those ones. [laughs]

Do you have any rules or ideas that you return to for Golden Wolf? Any designing principles or beliefs that work for the studio?

So yeah we have three rules, the Golden Wolf Ethos, if you will. The first part is ‘no egos’. Don’t come in here thinking you know everything, and that you’re better than everyone else. You need to want to work as a team, in a collaborative environment.

Secondly, there’s no room for ‘okay work’. We need to constantly work to produce the best stuff we can: you need to have a good working attitude, to always push harder, and always have fun. If we are not having fun, then we also won’t be making our best work. We need to feel comfortable in our surroundings - the best work we’ve made, is when everyone chips in.

That, and understand that there’s always better work to be made. Go back and try harder. There’s always ways to make it better, you just need to invest the time.

What about software? Is there a particular package you would recommend an aspiring Wolf learns?

Hah, honestly, it doesn’t matter what software you learn. For 3D animated films, it’s Maya. For advertising, it’s Cinema 4D. TVPaint is quickly becoming the standard for 2D animation, but I’m a strong believer in the idea that once you know the basics of an animation program, you can apply it to any of them. Really, it doesn’t matter what software you use, it’s just mastering a specific program and getting that basic understanding of the key principles.

For example, we’ve got a guy downstairs who learned animation in Toon Boom and has quickly picked up TVPaint. It’s the same process, it’s just finding out where the buttons are. For Golden Wolf, we do our 2D animation in TVPaint or Adobe Animate, as you’ve got all the drawing power of the Adobe suites in pretty much both packages. The virtual camera tool in TVPaint is weird though, so we composite everything in After Effects. I think it’s important that you learn how to animate in TVPaint, and then comp it in After Effects, adding texture and different effects (like the virtual camera) in After Effects.

You mentioned Golden Wolf plan to explore stop motion, is this something you want to explore for advertising or for more personal projects?

So yeah, stop motion! It’s really cool, and it’s a rising medium. Everything’s fluid, and it’s really trendy at the moment. A while ago, everyone wanted 3D in advertising, but not the big thing is 2D. But at the moment with the Wes Anderson films, stop motion is really hot right now. It’s really interesting, and it’s something that we will be looking at in the future as a way to diversify and experiment with animation. At the moment, though, it costs too much for a full stop motion advertisement, and it’s not going to be as popular or gauge as big of a reaction in comparison to a 2D thing. So it’s still not quite there yet for us.

Anything else?

Something I would say is to really use reference, man! Grab gifs of films, video games, animations and panels from comic books, illustrations and posters and make a reference moodboard for each project. It’s something to always return to, and it’s not stealing or tracing because you’re taking something and responding to it, and making it your own. In particular, look at anime and study how they simplify the body mechanics in normal sequences and focus on the action. Its that idea of an economical approach to animation, and it’s all in the planning.

I hope I was able to answer all your questions man, and it’s great that you’re asking these questions now. When I was a first year, no one even had any idea or the thought to do this sort of thing. It’s great that you’re doing this now, that you’re brave and confident enough and it shows that you have an idea of where you want to go. That’s extremely rare for a student like yourself.

But yeah, I manage the student outreach here at Golden Wolf, as a way to give back and help the developing community. You’re one of the only students to actually come here and speak to us, and it’s a great start and practice to keep doing. Reaching out to industry professionals is probably one of the best things you can do as a student.

Summary Here, I was actually able to meet up and speak with animation lead Henry from Golden Wolf Studios. This was an amazing experience for me to walk around the studio, take photos and really discuss the company and the animation industry as a whole with an experienced professional. Whilst my initial plan was to look at motion designer Mattias Breitholtz in particular, I feel it will be more valuable to present parts of this actual conversation with Golden Wolf to the class in my presentation, as a way to evidence actual primary research into industry practices. I had the opportunity to see how the studio runs, and discuss Golden Wolf in-depth in a way that I haven’t been able to find online.

My next move will be to take some of the key points from this interview and present them into a visually pleasing and minimalist presentation, as my focus has shifted on discussing this primary research as opposed to my own secondary inquiry into motion design as a whole. I’m happy with the amount of research I have been able to collect and gather for this Industry Roles assignment, and have reached a point where I can begin designing the presentation with the help of my teammates.

#ba1b:mediaroles

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coolkoreamag · 7 years

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Supermodel Soo Joo Park talks perfectionism, insomnia and accidental fame to the EveningStandard.

Model of the moment @Soojmooj showcases Chanel’s new haute couture collection and talks fame with Amy Verner.

Despite the fact that she is this evening dressed down in skinny jeans and a Stevie Nicks T-shirt, sporting a messy mop of peroxide-blonde hair, Soo Joo Park is still an unmistakeable presence when she glides into the lobby bar of Paris’s glamorous Le Roch hotel, near the Place Vendôme. But if even off-duty she seems to exude an outward air of confidence, in person she is unassuming.

‘I was worried, I was in the car and I was like, “Do you have any powder?”’ she says, when I make a (positive) comment about her complexion. ‘There are little breakouts. I’m wearing a little bit of make-up right now but underneath are very dark under-eye circles… I was thinking I wasn’t looking so normal.’

If she does not exhibit the same self-assuredness as a Kate, Naomi or Christy might do, Park has still managed to follow them into mononym status. And though the Korean-American supermodel may not have been around for as long, she’s a regular on the Chanel catwalk, and has been an agent of change in the beauty world as the first Asian model to land a multi-million dollar contract with L’Oréal.

It’s thanks to Chanel that we’re meeting today. Park counts the house’s creative director, Karl Lagerfeld, as one of her greatest supporters and has spent the day shooting at the grand Château de Vaugien, south-west of Paris, clad in the fashion house’s latest couture collection, all flamboyant frothy gowns and pastel-hued tweeds.

This is a world in which Park is now in control. Millennial models such as the Hadid sisters and Kendall Jenner might have had to walk in show after show this year alone, but Park, 31, can decide how busy she wants to be — partly because ‘I’m a horrible perfectionist. I’m almost never happy with anything I do, 100 per cent.’ Compared with previous seasons, this most recent month of ready-to-wear shows was a breeze; aside from appearing in the Baja East presentation in New York she only walked the Chanel show with its unforgettable simulated rocket launch within the Grand Palais.

The trade-off of such success is that she has outgrown the desirable niche of newness. ‘Even though there are a more diverse group of [models], you still are categorised as a person into a certain type; and a lot of the time, they want something new. I had my time, the blonde hair was new and refreshing to the scene at that point,’ she says, matter-of-factly.

In many ways she still doesn’t fit the traditional model mould. The industry might give the impression of pursuing greater diversity but she remains among a small group of internationally known, in-demand Asian models that include Liu Wen and Fernanda Ly. Unsurprisingly, models.com has ranked her one of its ‘Money Girls’, a benchmark of the size and quality of her contracts. This puts her in the company of the ‘new supers’ such as Karlie Kloss, Cara Delevingne and Joan Smalls.

Park made history in 2015 as L’Oréal’s first Asian-American spokesmodel (the French beauty behemoth dates back to 1909) and she is the face of Redken, making her the first Asian-American to front two large beauty brands. Her hair happens to be a pearly shade of white, which defines her from the above group, imbuing her with a non-conformist edge. Only after dyeing her hair did she end up on Chanel’s radar thanks to former French Vogue editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld. The bleaching takes its toll to be sure, but it has helped maintain her visibility. And Park is unlikely to run out of defining moments soon. The current issue of W Korea features three covers of her shot by three top Korean photographers; unbelievably, this is the first time the magazine has devoted the cover to a single Korean model. She realises all these firsts have a cumulative effect. ‘It means something more and more,’ she explains. ‘And that, in a way, shows who I am in this industry, especially because it’s an opportunity for me to kind of make my culture; and I am.’

Interestingly, modelling was an accidental career for Park. She grew up in Seoul until the age of 10 when her family moved to California. Before fashion, she had studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley (she can wax poetic about Bauhaus and Mies van der Rohe). She is also a keen linguist: ‘I speak Korean and English fluently. I picked up French when I was studying in high school [and] speak a tiny bit of Japanese, because it’s very similar to Korean.’

It was in 2010 that she was first scouted in a vintage shop in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. She recalls a woman approaching her with questions about her height and age. Upon learning that Park was 23 at the time she apparently said, ‘You’re a lot older than I thought.’ Park’s reaction: ‘What a terrible thing to say.’

Was there ever any resistance from her parents over dropping out of university and pursuing modelling? ‘They’re very proud of me. At the same time, I think as parents they worry about the next step, because modelling isn’t a lifetime thing for most people.’ This might be why she hasn’t, she says, missed a single Chanel show since she started. When Lagerfeld presented his Resort 2016 offering in Seoul, Park opened the show and took the final loop with the designer and his godson, Hudson Kroenig.

Spending time in a lower register — listening to music, watching Netflix or practising meditation — is critical to staying equalised, Park insists. She’s swapped the West Coast for New York and is currently based in trendy Bushwick while she has her apartment in the East Village renovated.

At one point, she says that she was experiencing severe insomnia — an occupational hazard primarily, but also because she says she has a tendency to get caught up in her own thoughts. ‘I was flying from one place to another, and every successful model has to learn how to cope with that; mine was even worse because I just get too in my head.’ She admits that her perfectionism doesn’t help: ‘It takes a lot for me to just kind of pat myself on the back.’

Enter meditation, kundalini yoga and breathing exercises, which complement her fitness routine that includes kickboxing and floor exercises with a trainer friend who owns Rumble Boxing in New York. ‘I’m trying to diversify my regimen,’ she says, citing regular facials and massages as additional essentials. ‘I’m more low-maintenance than most people,’ she says, before clarifying, ‘not most people — most models, I guess.’

Indeed, there is a grounded nonchalance in her attitude, which she chalks up to having a sense of who she was before she began. ‘This industry can make you very disillusioned, but I started later so I think I was able to kind of forge who I was a little bit more. I also have really good people around me whom I love.’ This group includes her boyfriend, photographer Jack Waterlot, and an architect university friend who is currently overseeing works on the East Village flat. ‘It’s going to be sick,’ she enthuses, name-checking Paris architect Joseph Dirand as inspiration. Certainly, for someone who is fast becoming a global fashion icon, a sanctuary-type home feels as much like a necessity as an indulgence.

#Soo Joo Park #Supermodel #South Korea #Korea

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technato · 6 years

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Video Friday: ROS 10 Years, Robotic Imaginations, and Centimetre Bots

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

Image: Australian Centre for Field Robotics/YouTube

Centimetre Bots developed at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):

IEEE IRC 2018 – January 31-2, 2018 – Laguna Hills, Calif.

HRI 2018 – March 5-8, 2018 – Chicago, Ill.

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

In case you weren’t keeping track, Monday, December 4, was National Cookie Day in the United Sttes, so here’s a throwback to MIT’s PR2 baking a cookie (they say it’s called a “Chocolate Afghan,” whatever that is).

[ MIT ]

We’ve been waiting TEN YEARS for this: It’s the official ROS 10 year montage!

[ ROS.org ]

UC Berkeley researchers have developed a robotic learning technology that enables robots to imagine the future of their actions so they can figure out how to manipulate objects they have never encountered before. In the future, this technology could help self-driving cars anticipate future events on the road and produce more intelligent robotic assistants in homes, but the initial prototype focuses on learning simple manual skills entirely from autonomous play.

Using this technology, called visual foresight, the robots can predict what their cameras will see if they perform a particular sequence of movements. These robotic imaginations are still relatively simple for now – predictions made only several seconds into the future – but they are enough for the robot to figure out how to move objects around on a table without disturbing obstacles. Crucially, the robot can learn to perform these tasks without any help from humans or prior knowledge about physics, its environment or what the objects are. That’s because the visual imagination is learned entirely from scratch from unattended and unsupervised exploration, where the robot plays with objects on a table. After this play phase, the robot builds a predictive model of the world, and can use this model to manipulate new objects that it has not seen before.

“In the same way that we can imagine how our actions will move the objects in our environment, this method can enable a robot to visualize how different behaviors will affect the world around it,” said Sergey Levine, assistant professor in Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, whose lab developed the technology. “This can enable intelligent planning of highly flexible skills in complex real-world situations.”

[ UC Berkeley ]

This small bot is capable of doing useful tasks in a fully autonomous fashion. Features include on-board computing, communications, sensing, power management, solar system and high torque motors. There is also space for additional payloads. Small robots have a number of potential applications including materials inspection (i.e., pipes), navigating through collapsed buildings, intelligent transportation/delivery, micro surgery, surveillance and more.

[ University of Sydney ]

Honda will unveil its new 3E (Empower, Experience, Empathy) Robotics Concept at CES 2018, demonstrating a range of experimental technologies engineered to advance mobility and make people’s lives better. Expressing a variety of functions and designs, the advanced robotic concepts demonstrate Honda’s vision of a society where robotics and AI can assist people in many situations, such as disaster recovery, recreation and learning from human interaction to become more helpful and empathetic.

-3E-A18, a companion robotics concept that shows compassion to humans with a variety of facial expressions

-3E-B18, a chair-type mobility concept designed for casual use in indoor or outdoor spaces

-3E-C18, a small-sized electric mobility concept with multi-functional cargo space

-3E-D18, an autonomous off-road vehicle concept with AI designed to support people in a broad range of work activities

[ Honda ]

I am not entirely sure what LOVOT is, except that LOVE × ROBOT = LOVOT, and it’s apparently being developed by the lead developer on Pepper.

Here is how LOVOT is different from ROBOT, according to the website:

ROBOT improves the convenience of life.

LOVOT improves the quality of life.

Basically, ROBOT obeys anyone’s instructions.

LOVOT sometimes shy personally to people other than you.

ROBOT heads for one purpose and does not take unnecessary movements.

LOVOT stares at you, and sometimes makes a wasteful move.

ROBOT will not listen to anyone’s bitches.

LOVOT will be your power to cry.

I’ll take it. Launching in 2019.

[ LOVOT ] via [ Groove-X ]

Robots, drones and AI. The Danish Technological Institute (DTI) in Odense, Denmark is working with a wide variety of robotics. What many people do not know, however, is that there is also a small cross-disciplinary special task force dedicated to saving Christmas.

If I woke up on Christmas morning and found a box with a UR3 in it, I’d be just as happy as that kid.

[ DTI ]

Stanford is testing some gecko-inspired grippers on our favorite cubical space robot, Astrobee:

[ NASA ]

Kuka Robotics, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to lend Simone Giertz a LBR iiwa arm which I bet they had to contractually require her not to “accidentally” destroy.

[ Simone Giertz ]

Mechanical Engineering’s Aaron Johnson talks about his research in creating robots that can be useful to help humans perform desired behaviors in any type of terrain.

Fun fact: robots are clinically proven to perform better when they have googly eyes on them. And we’re reeeaaally looking forward to seeing what a Minitaur with an actuated back-tail can do.

[ CMU RoboMechanics Lab ]

Thanks Aaron!

Robust and accurate visual-inertial estimation is crucial to many of today’s challenges in robotics. Being able to localize against a prior map and obtain accurate and drift-free pose estimates can push the applicability of such systems even further. Most of the currently available solutions, however, either focus on a single session use-case, lack localization capabilities or an end-to-end pipeline. We believe that only a complete system, combining state-of-the-art algorithms, scalable multi-session mapping tools, and a flexible user interface, can become an efficient research platform. We therefore present maplab, an open, research-oriented visual-inertial mapping framework for processing and manipulating multi-session maps, written in C++.

On the one hand, maplab can be seen as a ready-to-use visual-inertial mapping and localization system. On the other hand, maplab provides the research community with a collection of multi-session mapping tools that include map merging, visual-inertial batch optimization, and loop closure. Furthermore, it includes an online frontend that can create visual-inertial maps and also track a global drift-free pose within a localization map. In this paper, we present the system architecture, five use-cases, and evaluations of the system on public datasets. The source code of maplab is freely available for the benefit of the robotics research community.

[ GitHub ] via [ ETH Zurich ASL ]

Thanks Juan!

Qooboooooo

[ Qoobo ] via [ Kazumichi Moriyama ]

Jamie Paik’s Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RLL) at EPFL has been getting up to some modular, squishable, deformable stuff this year:

What’s that little jumpy dude at a minute in, have we seen that before…?

[ RRL ]

I can totally do this:

[ YouTube ]

This video by George Joseph shows the view of a Cozmo robot as it navigates through doorways marked by ArUco markers. The software is part of the cozmo-tools package available on GitHub. Work done at Carnegie Mellon University, November 2017.

Not bad for a little toy robot, right?

[ GitHub ]

Drone Adventures sent a team to Sao Tomé and Principe in March 2017 to map several shores around the islands where erosion and flooding threaten local communities.

[ Drone Adventures ]

Rusty Squid Robotic Design Principles: The evolution of robotics is too important to leave in the hands of the engineers alone.

Design practice and thinking are simply not done in the robotics labs around the world. Large sums of cash are spent on very expensive robotics and the first time the engineers see how the public react is when the robots are complete… and they wonder why the robots aren’t being welcomed with open arms.

Our robotic art and design laboratory has gone back to first principles and created a robust design process that draws on the traditions of puppetry, animatronics and experience design to build rich and meaningful robots.

[ Rusty Squid ]

Thanks Richard!

The nice thing about robots is that you can program them to laugh, even if your jokes are really really bad.

Is Nao capable of giving high fives? Wouldn’t it be a high three?

[ RobotsLAB ]

YouTube’s auto translate can’t make sense of this, but I think Sota is suggesting that you buy a robot for Christmas?

[ Vstone ]

Per Sjöborg interviews Mel Torrie from Autonomous Solutions in the latest episode of Robots in Depth:

Mel Torrie, is the founder and CEO of ASI, Autonomous Solutions Inc. He talks about how ASI develops a diversified portfolio of vehicle automation systems across multiple industries.

[ Robots in Depth ]

This week’s CMU RI Seminar is from Alan Wagner, on “Exploring Human-Robot Trust during Emergencies”:

This talk presents our experimental results related to human-robot trust involving more than 2000 paid subjects exploring topics such as how and why people trust a robot too much and how broken trust in a robot might be repaired. From our perspective, a person trusts a robot when they rely on and accept the risks associated with a robot’s actions or data. Our research has focused on the development of a formal conceptualization of human-robot trust that is not tied to a particular problem or situation. This has allowed us to create algorithms for recognizing which situations demand trust, provided insight into how to repair broken trust, and affords a means for bootstrapping one’s evaluation of trust in a new person or new robot. This talk presents our results using these techniques as well as our larger computational framework for representing and reasoning about trust. Our framework draws heavily from game theory and social exchange theories. We present results from this work and an ongoing related project examining social norms in terms of social and moral norm learning.

[ CMU RI Seminar ]

Video Friday: ROS 10 Years, Robotic Imaginations, and Centimetre Bots syndicated from http://ift.tt/2Bq2FuP

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technato · 6 years

Text

Video Friday: ROS 10 Years, Robotic Imaginations, and Centimetre Bots

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

Image: Australian Centre for Field Robotics/YouTube

Centimetre Bots developed at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

IEEE IRC 2018 – January 31-2, 2018 – Laguna Hills, Calif.

HRI 2018 – March 5-8, 2018 – Chicago, Ill.

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

[ MIT ]

We’ve been waiting TEN YEARS for this: It’s the official ROS 10 year montage!

[ ROS.org ]

[ UC Berkeley ]

[ University of Sydney ]

-3E-A18, a companion robotics concept that shows compassion to humans with a variety of facial expressions

-3E-B18, a chair-type mobility concept designed for casual use in indoor or outdoor spaces

-3E-C18, a small-sized electric mobility concept with multi-functional cargo space

-3E-D18, an autonomous off-road vehicle concept with AI designed to support people in a broad range of work activities

[ Honda ]

I am not entirely sure what LOVOT is, except that LOVE × ROBOT = LOVOT, and it’s apparently being developed by the lead developer on Pepper.

Here is how LOVOT is different from ROBOT, according to the website:

ROBOT improves the convenience of life.

LOVOT improves the quality of life.

Basically, ROBOT obeys anyone’s instructions.

LOVOT sometimes shy personally to people other than you.

ROBOT heads for one purpose and does not take unnecessary movements.

LOVOT stares at you, and sometimes makes a wasteful move.

ROBOT will not listen to anyone’s bitches.

LOVOT will be your power to cry.

I’ll take it. Launching in 2019.

[ LOVOT ] via [ Groove-X ]

If I woke up on Christmas morning and found a box with a UR3 in it, I’d be just as happy as that kid.

[ DTI ]

Stanford is testing some gecko-inspired grippers on our favorite cubical space robot, Astrobee:

[ NASA ]

Kuka Robotics, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to lend Simone Giertz a LBR iiwa arm which I bet they had to contractually require her not to “accidentally” destroy.

[ Simone Giertz ]

Mechanical Engineering’s Aaron Johnson talks about his research in creating robots that can be useful to help humans perform desired behaviors in any type of terrain.

Fun fact: robots are clinically proven to perform better when they have googly eyes on them. And we’re reeeaaally looking forward to seeing what a Minitaur with an actuated back-tail can do.

[ CMU RoboMechanics Lab ]

Thanks Aaron!

[ GitHub ] via [ ETH Zurich ASL ]

Thanks Juan!

Qooboooooo

[ Qoobo ] via [ Kazumichi Moriyama ]

Jamie Paik’s Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RLL) at EPFL has been getting up to some modular, squishable, deformable stuff this year:

What’s that little jumpy dude at a minute in, have we seen that before…?

[ RRL ]

I can totally do this:

[ YouTube ]

Not bad for a little toy robot, right?

[ GitHub ]

Drone Adventures sent a team to Sao Tomé and Principe in March 2017 to map several shores around the islands where erosion and flooding threaten local communities.

[ Drone Adventures ]

Rusty Squid Robotic Design Principles: The evolution of robotics is too important to leave in the hands of the engineers alone.

[ Rusty Squid ]

Thanks Richard!

The nice thing about robots is that you can program them to laugh, even if your jokes are really really bad.

Is Nao capable of giving high fives? Wouldn’t it be a high three?

[ RobotsLAB ]

YouTube’s auto translate can’t make sense of this, but I think Sota is suggesting that you buy a robot for Christmas?

[ Vstone ]

Per Sjöborg interviews Mel Torrie from Autonomous Solutions in the latest episode of Robots in Depth:

Mel Torrie, is the founder and CEO of ASI, Autonomous Solutions Inc. He talks about how ASI develops a diversified portfolio of vehicle automation systems across multiple industries.

[ Robots in Depth ]

This week’s CMU RI Seminar is from Alan Wagner, on “Exploring Human-Robot Trust during Emergencies”:

[ CMU RI Seminar ]

Video Friday: ROS 10 Years, Robotic Imaginations, and Centimetre Bots syndicated from http://ift.tt/2Bq2FuP

0 notes