Chimp's Body

Step five…the modular, moveable character

Chimp is a character within a children’s book therefore he/she is an actor. Chimp must express emotion, gesture and story. I want this character to stay true to the Charley Harper style that inspired him/her in the first place. The tiniest movement of a line (path), the smallest positioning of a shape, the slight alteration of a value or color will make all the difference in the audience’s reaction and engagement. 

With the front view of the chimp’s face designed, I make measurement guides (to keep proportions correct) and build a couple more point-of-views for the head.

 

Time to give the chimp some feelings. I start with the eyes and the eyebrows since they are extremely expressive. Later on I will develop mouth and jaw movements when I get an understanding of the full gesture of the pose needed.

The head is not finished yet, but it is far enough along that I can leave it and start working on the body. I’m not sure what all the poses will be for Chimp, so I read the manuscript and pick out a few poses that will most likely be used. I sculpt the character directly in Illustrator. This approach may not work for all styles, but for my Charley Harper style I think it works. And besides I am truly enjoying the 2-D sculpting process.  

In the photographs that follow you can see a variety of poses for Chimp. You also see the character’s inside structure. The character is modularly built from a series of shapes that mimic the skeletal/muscular system. He/she even has joints (usually circles). Anytime I want Chimp to raise an arm or point a finger, I select the body parts needed and rotate them into position. In many ways I am a puppet master. In fact the idea to work this way started by looking at jointed paper puppets, the ones that often use metal paper fasteners for joints.

I think that this method has stayed true to the Charley Harper aesthetic and it has also opened up the door for me to design actual paper puppets to match the characters in this book.