Ravensbourne Blog

Primary Research

next stage was to research a number of iconic characters from history, then talk to a wide range of people and asked what they thought of when hearing that characters name. I did not ask them what they thought they physically looked like, but what came to mind when thinking of that persons identity. For example, I asked them to describe what colours they thought of, what mood they portrayed, what artist of art piece it reminded them of, what animal they reminded them of, what material they associated with them etc. Through doing this I would gain an understanding of how they saw the character in terms of their characteristics, not simply how they have been presented to them in the past through films or pictures. The people I asked did not know the aim of my project until after they had answered the questions as this meant that they would not be biased when answering them or try to describe an image they would want to see the character looking like.

The characters which I used to ask my questions were The wicked Queen, The joker and Humpty dumpty. In total, the number of people I asked was 37. From these people I initially took into account what the most popular or reoccurring themes were. I encouraged people to be as random and obscure as possible with their answers so that I would have a less conventional representation of the person, rather than the typical perception of them. I then made a separate sheet for each character, listing what people had said about them and then used this as a reference to start sketching and coming up with some ideas as to how I would make this into a physical makeup form. By using a mood board I was able to visually take into account what the people had said they saw in each personality, for example if the colour green was frequently mentioned, I would constantly see that colour when working on my designs, instead of purely seeing the word green.

List of what people said for each character

The Wicked Queen