I continued to play around with different idea's and designs.

The common hare was in fact a really good piece of research because it's character fits the leshy's character really well. The leshy is described as being mischievous and sneaky, which are the characteristics that are used to describe a fox. It also makes me think, how do I want my character to stand? if it's being compared to a fox then surely it should look slender and toned?

Next I looked at eastern European animals and their features in more detail. For example the deer is indigenous to eastern Europe, it's most distinct feature is it's antlers! I went on to create deigns that incorporated the antler feature. I also analysed the brown bear and the common hare.

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.