Extended Design: Becky's Goblin Initial sketches

For Extended Practice I wanted to create a few different character designs for my portfolio. Becky Gilby asked me to design her a goblin for her stopmotion. This sounded like a great challenge as I don't normally draw weird and wonderful creatures like goblins. I first began designing by researching, gathering images on Pinterest to create a visual mood board for me to reference from. From this inspiration I found common shapes of the body, particularly with the head. The head was was always round or in the shape of a semi circle, these shaped heads were more common with small skinny bodies. Whereas with the bigger and fighter esk goblins, the heads were quite angular to match the body.

Goblin mood board

I then began to sketch different heads of the goblins first as to generate more ideas. I liked this exercise as it was fun experimenting with a mixture of shapes as well as the shape of ears and facial features. I took this further by drawing bodies as well but I wasn't too sure on some of the designs without a neck, I debated whether or not this would be difficult for Becky to animate with the puppets. However I did like one design in particular, to the point I got too excited and digitally coloured the design in, along with two others I quite liked. My favourite design is the goblin with the cheshire cat grin, he looks so mischievous and I liked the angle of the teeth. I drew one full body goblin, in which I was inspired by boar features, especially with the nose and mouth, I wanted this goblin to be quite greedy, eating anything it can get its hands on. I really enjoyed designing and colouring these designs, I experimented with colour using a multiply blending mode for the darker coloured shades. 

I sent these digital designs, as well as the sketches to Becky, to see if I had generated any ideas for her ideal vision of a goblin. She really liked the colouring and rounder heads, however none of the designs were quite what she wanted. 

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Digital Version

I continued to draw different shapes and sizes of goblins, some with no neck, however this was the charm of the design, it made the goblins look more like a frog. It also made the designs look creepy, which would match the dark story that Becky wants to absorb into her Stopmotion. I then designed more body shapes, this time more skinny and human like, I added torned clothes which Becky wanted for the final design. She really liked the body proportions and the general shape of the heads on these designs, which I continued with until I drew a head that Becky really liked. She also wanted a pot belly for the goblin, and for the height to be quite short. With these elements in mind I scanned in the later sketches to photoshop and began to drag different parts together before starting to draw the goblin in digital media.

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