Le Temps n’attend Personne Character Lineup
The character lineup from the story Le temps n’attend personne (time waits for no one) from my visual development class. A tale of the life of Madeline, a young girl who we get to see grow up, learn, and see her experience different stages of life, along with her grandmother Giselle. They work in a bookstore called "le petit coin du livre du village" (the little village book nook). The story starts as Madeline as a young girl, waiting to see what life has in store for her, to a teenager going through her angsty phase (as well as my favorite version of Madeline to draw), and finally, to a responsible adult. We also watch also Giselle grow with her and work together in their bookstore. Giselle has been raising Madeline as best she can so that she may one day be able to handle the business on her own, as Giselle knows she does not have a lot of time left with her granddaughter.
I'm having lots of fun with this project! The specialization course gives me good experience of what it is like to be a concept artist as it lets me create ideas and designs for stories, and I'm able to have the ability to be free and visualize it and express my ideas. Due to the French setting in the story, it was the perfect opportunity for me to experiment with a new style. Just like most of my work, I drew the characters, backgrounds, and scenes in a more rounded, cartoony style, but I am heavily inspired by the works of James Turner, the artist for the modern pokemon, namely characters and environments from the Kalos region, which is heavily inspired by France. Moving forward, I want to be able to capture the emotion on the future projects in this story.
I started visualizing and sketching different ideas for the family's pet cat Glacier. I aim to push his character as a slow moving, fat cat. So I gave him a mostly round shape and a big belly that touches the floor, with short stubby legs holding him up. For young Madeline, I gave her big expressive eyes and a feminine outfit. I experimented a lot with sketching her with a bowl cut or with bangs covering her forehead, usually a popular hairstyle for young children since a lot of them don't really know or care about their hairstyles yet. When drawing teenage Madeline, the best and most fun idea for me to explore was to draw her as a manic pixie dream girl/emo phase. My target market are in their late teens and young adults, I find that age group enjoys seeing characters in the emo phase as they relate and admire character that gives them a nostalgic feel. Madeline grew out of that phase eventually, I gave adult Madeline a more professional outfit, suitable for working at a bookstore and eventually becoming the owner. When coming up with ideation sketches for Giselle, my first thought was to look at the cast of the 80s sitcom; The Golden Girls. While making Giselle a typical soft and caring grandmother, I find that she stands out more as a no nonsense, strong, and serious character, much like fan favorite Golden Girl; Dorothy Zbornak. But through Giselle's stern and serious character, she is a caring grandmother for Madeline.