The Brief.
The project consisted in designing a character by picking a famous musician from the 80’s and turning him/her into a dancing tape casette.
Tasks: develop a vector illustration fit for limited puppet animation, create a looping animation 10 sec long, design a cool baseball cap with the character, integrating into the design a QR-code that leads to the looped animated track on COUB.
The Result.
Let's dive right into it. These are the results:
Beziered Bowie.
Dedicated to the hard core Bowie fans happy to have any new Ziggyteration.
David in Motion. Check the looped animation on Coub
For those moments when you'd like to party hard for a tiny fraction of time.
The Bowie Cap.
For those parties you wanted to dress up to as a rockstar but never had the nerves to wear funky cheetah leotards.
The Process.
The project was divided into several steps, but all started with extensive visual research.
Being a long time fan of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to turn him into an After Effects puppet. Thus, from the beginning I was certain about the character. However, the task of fusing the rockstar with a tape casette was a whole another issue I had to deal with.
Pick your track.
Although I have always loved Bowie's early work, I was visually much more familliar with his current extravagant, yet classy gentleman look. Hence, my "to do list" began with digging up old articles, music videos, photoshoots of Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Fun was ensured.
Tasks: gather references and find Bowie's most prominent features for further analysis.
Research showed several interesting details:
Research showed several interesting details:
- iris structure differes from one eye to the other.
- the face paint designs have become a part of the Bowie brand
- striking poses - just look at those archs!
- hairdo: big, flowy, red, gorgeous
- glitter: Bowie as Ziggy is quite a flamboyant young man
- colors: psychodelic, vivid, over the top, full of primary hues
- stripes: yes, they are everywhere
Don't worry, Mr Bowie, we'll turn you into a cassette.
Sketch it out
First ideas were already simple, but needed to be more abstract.Animating in perspective was not an option due to time constraints, hence, the camera angle changed as well.
Bezier-curve it
After several attempts, it seemed logical to go for a clean, flat look for a smoother puppet animation. As you can see the original idea went through several modifications - the arms were absolutely unnecessary and didn't do anything for the overall silhuette of the character, the build now looks simple and flat enough to start the animation process.
Pose 'em all!
Naturally, the song of choice was "Life on Mars", as it became apparent to me that it could be a fun challenge to lip sync "Mars" in that 10 second loop.
The task: create a short 10 sec loop and post in Coub. Use the software of your choice. Now GO.
Brand it!
Obviously, a character can be used in many design fields. In this case, the team decided it would be fun to create a baseball cap that could be used to spread the message.
Task: translate the character's design to a baseball cap and add a QR-code that leads to the animated loop.
Difficulties:
1. The QR-code is sensible to opened pixels. Choose your transfer technique wisely.
2. A readable QR code has ) to 10% distortion rate, everything above that threshold won't be recognized by most readers.
3. Small QR-codes pose a risk - some cameras won't Identify them.
4. There is a limited number of colors that allow the needed contrast for a well read image. For this purpose a white cap was chosen.
Not only the integration of the character and the QR-code itself posed a challenge, finding the right printing technique was also crucial for a successful result. Through research I found out that traditional techniques, such as screen printing and embroidery, won't work well, since these distort the image. Thermotransfer seems to work better with detailed designs, yet the challenge here is to fit the image into a designated area, specified by the printer.
Here are the first sketches and the result, adjusted to the printer's specifications.
