The Birth of a Feral Friend!

A new life forming in Illustrator!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to feralfriendz.blogspot.com and this is the very 1st post of this brand spanking new blog! *blingbling*

Wow, this is the first post.....I think there are too many things to introduce since everyone is very very unfamiliar and don't know what the heck is going on. Well let me introduce myself first and then what is this project about.

My name is Chen Hui Wen, I am a 23 year old female living in Malaysia. I currently study Visual Communication majoring in multimedia in Alfa College, Taman Paramount Petaling Jaya. This is my 2nd year in this lovely college and I belong to the crazy class of VC08A/B, yeah!

I believe most of the readers of this blog will be my fellow classmates and lecturers who will be checking out any progress and maybe posting comments(please be nice -.-). As you all (probably) already know, this is a project for the subject Intro. to Multimedia taught by Mr. James. We are required to design a character/mascot and create a blog for it. Other stuff we need to or might do is making dolls or models of our character, animated MSN emoticons, calendars, wallpapers..etc. We also might have an exhibition of our class' work if everything goes well. Wow, sounds like a lot of work but I believe it will be great fun and I look forward to learn how to do all these. ^_^

So after the briefing of the project, I start to look for reference and see what other designers' works are like. The library has a collection of Play magazines which is perfect for my research. There are great examples in the magazine and very related to the project, but extraordinary, monster and alien like characters is just not my thing. Some of them have exaggerated shapes and face expressions, some are also violent/brute and bloody looking too. I don't find them cute at all(please forgive the girly o' me) and I think it will be difficult for me to work with something that is not my style and don't have passion for. Since I like animals, so I thought why not just stick to animals? Animals that actually *look like* animals, ok?

I chose the african leopard as my character design. Why? I really don't know. I was randomly flipping through a book about wildlife painting and it struck me that I should draw a leopard. I think cats big and small, wild and tame have beautiful eyes. To me, I think one of the most important feature of a character is the eyes. How the eyes are drawn will also influence how attractive the character is to the audience. There's a saying that the eyes are the windows to one's soul and I believe that. The eyes can also tell the personality of a character.

Some sketches.

The major problem for me is keeping the character design simple. It should be simple because one of the reasons is we're required to publish a empty template/outline of the character for people to download and they can customize the character with a different look anyway they like. Also it will be easier for us to create dolls/models out of it. Second, the character should have some unique trait that clearly identifies itself(things like a hat, scar, torn ear, accessories...etc), not just like any ah beng ah lian ah gou ah mao in the street. The lower right sketch is the one approved by my lecturer, as you can see it is the smallest out all of them(about 1 head and a 1/3). I gave my character a flower on her head as an unique trait because she is a sweet little leopard cub. I know it's so....unspecial. =/

My worry is that my design is not outstanding enough compared to those designing monsters/aliens. Among the websites I've gotten from the Play magazines, one of them catches my attention instantly. It is about 3 husky characters called Husky X3. I like the concept and design very much. I don't think it is a complicated design. It is simple and effective, most importantly, it is attractively cute. Its the same like Kelu we saw in class. So I think I can try out designing animal characters and hope it turns out alright.

To clarify some things before I end this entry: I don't plan to name the leopard cub Feral Friendz. Feral Friendz is just the name of the website, and click here for the defination of the word feral if you need it. :P I will give a cute name for the cub later, and maybe if time allows, I will make a 2nd cub? Friendz are not complete with just 1 cub.

That's all for the long winded 1st post. *dies* I appreciate any comments or advice so if you have any, please feel free to post! You can also post links to your blog so I can look too.

Arigato gozaimasu! Ganbatte everyone~!