If i'm to design a character I need to have good facial references, so I spent the next couple of days taking photos of my peers at college for primary research. I asked them all to pull a range of different expressions, it went really well! I then went on to sketch some of these expressions and attempted to transform them into a character using their distinct features such as the eyes, the furrow of the eyebrows and the mouth (which are the sections of the face that show the most emotion)

Once I had the photo's of the lockton's printed off I began to experiment with the different design possibilities of the horns. I came to a realization then that I shouldn't incorporate Locton sheep characteristics into my piece, mainly because they're not indigenous to eastern Europe and my character is so it wouldn't make sense. It's at this point I started to explore the wildlife of eastern Europe in more detail.

I went on to take more primary research, this time I took some photos of animal life, particularly Lockton sheep. The Leshy is described has having large horns that are fashioned in the shape of rams horns, Lockton's were the closest thing I could get to that!

I've started to move onto my designing stage now, I've explored organic growths in nature such as ivy, fungus and moss. I really want my character to have a sense of scale and age, I don't want his form to be made out of the same materials! I went out and took photographs of a forest environment and the plant life within it, I also took some samples home for experimentation. From this Primary research I went on to make some small designs. I was particularly interested in some pine cones I collected, I extracted some of the segment and experimented with different layering techniques.

Pans Labyrinth by Guillermo Del Toro is also a really big influence for me because it's characters are so similar to my "Leshy" character. The character I'm referring to is the faun.
His obvious features; The horns, goat like ears and pale complexion are incredibly similar to the Leshy's characteristics.

I've spent the majority of my time looking at artists such as Jordu Schell, who is a world renowned sculpture and model maker with in the film industry. I really love his style, he's a rare talent because he is part of a handful of people that are asked to make physical models for film production; it's mostly all done in 3D software. I've done an in depth analysis of his work in my book. What really jumps out at me in his work are the eyes of the models! they're so lifelike it's scary. 

He uses a very diverse range of materials including ones that I've never had the opportunity to use at college. Materials such as silicone and latex for the skin and texture! If I'm to take anything away from his influence it would be the expression he captures in the eyes of his characters

In addition to the previous research I also looked at Henry Selick's Coraline. I studied the model making techniques and styles of the stop motion in the previous project, I still find the character and set design really inspiring now. The things that really jump out at me are the elongated limbs of the characters, it gives them an elegant and aesthetic feel. Also the sets are incredibly detailed, I was surprised to discover that these sets we're in fact tiny, knowing this now I can really appreciate the amount of time and skill that's gone in to creating them. I hope that my model and set will reflect a level of skill that can be appreciated by the viewer.