Personal Development and SWOT Analysis: Mushroom Character - Villian

For the development of this characters pose I wanted them to be positioned in some form of power position, which is why I chose the have them holding their arms up in victory as if trying to intimidate those around them.

As before I decided to create this character initially using the same purple colour scheme as I was some reason finding this a lot easier to work with, not only this but I like how it allowed me to compare the completion of each character to how it would look using the original colour palette so I could measure its success.

I wanted to highlight the character and personality of this character even further hence I decided to incorporate maggots within the design to portray that the character is literally rotten. I found this addition rather successful as I managed to maintain a viewer friendly character whilst creating a sense of villainy which is what I was hoping to achieve.  

For this character I decided to go with a completely contrasting colour scheme of red and black to further enhance the narrative that this character is a villain due to the stereotypical associations of the colours.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Strengths:

• I felt my choice of placement for the maggots was fun and gave them motion considering some of the insects were travelling away from the holes they had dug through. Perhaps I could create these creatures as secondary characters which serve their mushroom lord? That could be an interesting concept to explore.
• I like how I have chosen to use a completely new eye shape for this character which was one of my targets from my previous experimentation. I feel the use of these slightly edged eyes work much better for the design and purpose of the character and fit their style much better than the basic round shapes.

Weaknesses:

• I chose to incorporate both red and black shadows within the character in order to create some consistency between the body and cap of the mushroom. However, I feel this wasn’t as effective as I expected and instead it appears to cause the underneath of the mushroom to appear strange being completely grey.
• I tried really hard with the expression of this character as I wanted to create something which gave off a menacing personality whilst still remaining suitable for a slightly younger audience. This is why I chose to add line work to create wrinkles in other areas of their face to help accentuate their difference between the other ‘good’ mushrooms. However I feel they make the character appear aged rather than menacing which isn’t entirely what I was going for.

Opportunities:

• I have been inspired for the storyline of this character where he leads his army of maggots to try and overcome the ‘good’ mushrooms. I feel this could create a super interesting story and I feel this personal project has left me brimming with interesting concepts and ideas I can’t wait to work on.
• I could begin developing this whole environment as a graphic novel, and publish it online once completed using editions and chapters to allow me to work on the project in between other tasks.

Targets:

• I feel this pose could also work well as an exclamation of joy or excitement, perhaps I could investigate the impact of altering the expressions and how this affects the body language overall.
• I would love to explore the creation of a magic mushroom style design as I feel my overall mushroom characters could work really well using this theme.