Visual Development - Characters
Mira - "Hair for You"
Studying from Life
Before being able to create my own Indonesian character I knew I had to some real life, observational
studies to understand characteristics and features that young Indonesian girls possessed.
Initial Design + Character Exploration
My overall goal for the main character of "Mira" was to design and create a character that was going to translate well into 3D and looked appealing to mass audiences while retaining a strong visual that translates her Indonesian heritage.
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I wanted Mira to be cute and reflective of what children her age looked like, so I started with round, soft shape language for her initial design. However it was very clear that Mira's clothes were not giving any indication of who she was or where was from so I decided to do some research & development on not only different type of batik patterns that were local to the region but also different types and cuts of children dresses, and color variations.
I also did some research and development for children's footwear in Indonesia as the bright boots initially, while iconic and created a nice silhouette, was not reflective of Indonesian culture.
After the second stage of development, I discussed with the rest of my team on which design we liked or we could be combined to not only looked appealing but was also going to be possible to created in 3D space. We felt the batik pattern often looked to busy and distracted the focus on the character so I went to develop a pattern that implemented negative space to allow the character to breathe. We also leaned more to a pink/maroon colorway as to reflect the pink that is symbolized for breast cancer which our film is about.
After a third round of development and discussing with the team, we ended up going with design no.8 and shoe no.2 as our final design. After that, I did more character studies with Mira's final design to get a better understanding of her character and how she lives and interacted in a space with others. The shape of her hair was also something I always tried to emphasize in each exploration.
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