Official Change of Idea!

After much consideration I have decided to completely change not only my idea but my brief, reverting from a children's television program to a music video. The largest problem I have and will have with my initial idea of using puppets for a children's television program is the expense. The cost of all the materials that i am going to need to create effective and proper sized puppets will be too great, also the time that i am going to have to spend on making the puppets and ensuring that they look as close to the image i have in my head is too greater a task, and when you combine these points the outcome won't match the time and money i will have spent.
I have tried to make a mock up of a puppet using a baby doll as the head, but in doing so, it hit me how hard this project is going to be, if it's this hard to make a puppet body for a baby doll, and create face paint make up that looks realistic like a monster, it's going to be even harder to make a large size scaled puppet body for a human. I don't think i'll be able to create the image i have in my head of how the monsters i look into reality which overall will be a major disappointment and look unprofessional and cheap! Which i don't want.
In considering the music video, i know that any ideas i have in my head i can create and put into action easier. I already have a basis for an idea and a song after carrying some research into considering the worth of changing briefs. I know i have a lot of work to do, but i think i can do it and make the final outcome worth while and better than it would be if it was the children's program.

Practicing Face Paints

First, I applied a yellow base coat and then with a black wax pen drew across her eye brows to look like a big thick monobrow.

Then I drew a white circle on the top of the bridge of her nose as a base for a third eye. I then did the same on her eye lids. Inside the white circles I did a black spot with a blue ring around to look like pupils.

I think the eyes have potential to look quite realistic once I get the nack of face painting!

For my second monster, I did an orange base and drew on big blue eyebrows with a blue wax pen. I then drew on big white fangs to look like big teeth coming up from her lips.

Then it was their turn to turn me into a monster!

Moodboard

This was the result of typing Little Monsters and Cute Monsters into google images, i've created a collection of these images on a page using Adobe InDesign.

These images of monsters are all quite innocent and cute, a total contrast of the initial scary image we see when we first think of 'monster'. This is the image i'd like to create with my characters so that the children aren't scared to watch. Also, I think that I will use bright colours like the monsters are above, perhaps stick to five simple colours such as green, blue, orange, purple and pink. As these are girls and boys colours and are popular amongst the images above.

Sesame Street

I created this document on Adobe InDesign using images from google image search and extracted some information from wikipedia whilst other information is entirely from me :)

Sesame Street is a very popular show because it uses humour that both adults and children can understand whilst using smiley memorable creatures. Each character has their own colour and similar eyes and mouths which make the puppets easily recogniseable and associable with Sesame Street. Perhaps I should make the eyes similar as eyes are the feature you look at the most to find comfort and understand, however I will be using human eyes so this should be easy to do.

Where The Wild Things Are

After showing some friends my initial ideas they said that one of the characters looked remarkably alike to a character from the film 'Where The Wild Things Are'. They also recommended I watched the film to gain more design inspiration for my characters, looks and personalities... So I did :) I really enjoyed watching this film, the movement, costumes and animation of the wild things was captivating. They looked and acted so real that I almost started to believe they were and wanted to watch it again to see if I could understand whether they were or not. Each character had a personality that was similar to someone you knew, a bossy woman, a push over guy, a shy timid guy, a clever guy, a loner and a friendly unlucky guy. They all had human voices and mannerisms which made the idea that they real even more probable. I think I will make sure my monsters have human mannerisms so that they are easier to relate to and watch.

Initial Ideas For Characters