Creative Response Final Designs

        Although I am pleased with the outcome of my Creative Response, I am disappointed that I did not have the time to gain more experience with modelling and puppet making, which is ultimately my main area of creative interest. Also. if I had been able to complete both character designs, as originally intended, I believe my response would have better reflected the issues covered in my essay, regarding gender representation and the gaze. However, that being said, I did enjoy the experience of being able to focus on character design and sketching, without the pressure to produce an animated outcome, which in past modules has meant the design stages have been somewhat rushed.

        I have found it challenging to design a character without a clear character profile. As I wasn't intending to use this character in a story or narrative, I didn't see it as a priority to develop a backstory/personality/motive for her. She doesn't even have a name. In hindsight, I believe it would have been helpful to the design process if I had a clear idea of who this character is, regardless of whether I intend to further develop her. 

        Indeed, I do intend to revisit this character. After spending so much time developing her, it would be a shame to discard her, and not put her to future use. As I have previously mentioned, I designed her with the intention of becoming an animated puppet, and so hopefully one day I will be able to construct her.

Character design demonstrating
the required armature shape.

Creative Response Design Process

        Unfortunately, due to demands from other modules, I have had to curb my ambitions for my Creative Response. I simply will not have time to model a character as a puppet, or even a clay sculpt. However, I have still considered how the character will function as a puppet during the design process. Even more disappointingly, I have decided to focus on a single character, rather than the proposed pair. While I may have been able to produce two separate designs, I would rather allow more time to develop a single character in more depth. Perhaps I will be able to return to this project at a later date, perhaps over summer, and realise my original intentions of creating stop motion puppets.

        As I had already begun to develop the 'attractive' character, I will continue to work with her. To begin with, I sketched out a number of different body shapes, inspired not only by popular animated characters, but also real life women.This was a result of discovering during the course of my research that a number of Disney Princesses were designed around the appearances of contemporary icons. For example, Sleeping Beauty was apparently inspired by Audrey Hepburn's willowy figure. This may account for changing trends in female representation over the years, depending on what body shape is fashionable, just as artists' favoured feminine features have changed over the centuries.

        The next stage in my design process was to look at the face. Oddly, with beautiful 2D characters (from Jessica Rabbit, to Betty Boop, to Cinderella), their faces can be remarkably bland and featureless, with extremely large almond eyes, cupid's bow lips and little else, with only a hint of a nose when seen in profile. Yet despite this trend, some have more personality than others. 1950s Disney princesses are, in my opinion, incredibly bland. They bear more than a passing resemblance to barbie dolls: dead behind the eyes, with little expression. However, later heroines have been granted more vivacity, although it is hard to pinpoint what it is in the designs which make Belle and Ariel more appealing than Cinderella, as it is undoubtedly not just when animated that their faces are more expressive.

        Drawing the faces was, for me, quite challenging. I struggled to escape the confines of realism, and draw a character rather than a person. I studied the faces of beautiful women, such as Marilyn Monroe, to decide on which features were important, before exaggerating these features (face shape, eyes, mouth). Stop motion characters follow similar conventions to 2D characters, in terms of facial design, with an emphasis on eyes and mouth (the sources of emotion and expression). Yet I tried to imbue my character's face with a little more character besides.

The defining features of my character are her flowing red hair
(which has connotations of a seductive fieriness), a heart shaped
face and large, emotive eyes.

        With a firm idea of what my character's face would look like, it was then time to combine face and body designs. Of all the body shapes I had explored, I felt that a combination of the two would work best: an hourglass figure, with broad hips to accommodate a sturdy armature, yet svelter, and more willowy than 'bombshells' such as Jessica Rabbit.

        I also felt that clothing can contribute a lot to how 'attractive' a character is, and indeed whether she invites the male gaze. Corsets, garters, close fitting bodices, sweetheart necklines all create the impression of a woman intended to be objectified. I wished my character to have a slightly more subtle appeal, and not be a garish parody of Mulvey's 'exhibited' woman. Consequently, I created a figure hugging gown, with a fishtail shape which would accentuate the hourglass shape. As the 'female gaze' is apparently the result of a reflection of our ideal ego, I hoped that beautiful clothing and hair would make her an object of female desire too.

Gender & The Gaze Essay Research

Creative Response

        My initial intention for the Creative Response was to use the research I had gathered for my essay, and produce two opposing female character designs, and possibly produce a sculpt showing how they would appear as stop motion figures. One character would conforms to the typical, beautified, 'objectifying' representation of women, and the other would attempt to subvert these conventions, without relying on other stereotypical representations. For example, the soft, cuddly matriarch, or a Disney style villainess.

        The latter would undoubtedly prove the greater challenge. While there are characters out there who break the desirable mould, they are far rarer. One of the main examples which I explored in my essay was Joanna Quinn's Beryl, who manages to be appealing despite not fitting societal norms of beauty. However, other animated women who rise above being a mere object of desire, such as those created by Candy Guard, can be more abstract in representation, allowing their words, behaviour and personality to do the majority of characterisation.

        Stop motion also provides some female characters that are not overwhelmingly beautiful, yet still appealing. Aardman has produced two such characters to serve as Wallace's love interests in A Close Shave and The Curse of the Wererabbit. Due to the house style, it would be odd if Wallace were seen alongside a Jessica Rabbit-esque siren, and both Wendolene and Lady Tottington are bound by the destinctive look established in A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers. Indeed Wendolene, Wallace's first love, seems to share his face shape, features, and body shape. In comparison, Lady Tottington is marginally more feminine, with a slimmer physique, face and added make up. However, the audience still acknowledges that they are intended to be beautiful in the context of their plasticine world.

        Courtney, Paranorman's sister, is an unusual example of stop motion character design. From her personality, and the way she confidently flirts, the audience understands she is meant to be attractive, yet her proportions are ridiculous. As with many of Laika's female characters, her torso is stick thin (as opposed to the multitudes of voluptuous women in animation) with a tiny waist, yet her hips are incredibly broad and rounded (a trait shared by Corpse Bride to a lesser degree), a parody of a pear shape which would be rejected in reality, yet is embraced in a puppet.

        Extreme exaggeration of the female form is common across all forms of animation, 2D and 3D, whether hourglass or apple. However, in the case of Courtney, I am of two minds whether her body is grotesque or beautiful. Yet when designing a stop motion character, the structure of an armature must play a significant role. Perhaps broader hips provide a more solid foundation, especially if a character has a larger bust.

Text Analysis: Rosalind Coward 'The Look'

Rosalind Coward’s exploration of The Look is focused on theories of women’s sexuality, and how their perception of self-image is shaped by the media and societal expectations. She addresses the commonly held notion that women have a ‘preoccupation with visual image…how these images measure up to a socially prescribed ideal’. Indeed, such a preoccupation is understandable, given the weight and importance placed upon image in Western media, often at the expense of other ‘sensual impressions’.

Recent technological developments such as recording, rapid reproduction and the internet have enabled Western culture’s obsession with looking. Cinema, television, advertising and magazines all focus upon idealised and fantastical visions of femininity, which is commonly held to be a result of male dominance and control of the visual media. Coward doesn’t dispute the idea that such control means that the look is largely controlled by men, or that ‘entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women’. She poses that the media’s camera is ‘an extension of the male gaze’, legitimising the ‘critical and aggressive’ gaze of men at ‘women on the street’ and in everyday life. The fact that women are often unable (or unwilling) to return such a judgemental and scrutinising look creates a power dynamic, where men are dominant and women are subordinate.

Coward acknowledges the somewhat prehistoric view of ‘man the hunter, a sort of cross between a rutting stag and David Bailey’, while women use their carefully ‘cultivated’ looks to ‘lure men to a terrible fate – monogamy’. Yet she disagrees that this is natural behaviour, but rather a result of social conventions of appropriate sexual behaviour. Looking is important in sexual relations, as a means of expressing dominance and subordination in the gender roles. However, Coward suggests that although voyeurism is ‘a way of taking sexual pleasure by looking at rather than being close to a particular object of desire, like a Peeping Tom’. The distance granted by voyeurism creates an element of security for the voyeur, allowing them to maintain the illusion of control and dominance.

The abundance of images of women in Western culture could be seen to have a profound impact on the way women function in society, as well as their perceived role in sexual relations. The importance of visual image is such that it is perceived to have a significant bearing on women’s ‘social success, and indeed to whether or not we will be loved’. Thanks to the romantic ideal perpetuated in the media, women have grown to recognise that appearance is a vital way for men to form opinions of women. Regardless of how untrue or illogical it may be, an intrinsic link has developed over time between women’s perceptions of visual appearance, and ‘security and comfort’. If women feel desirable, then there is a greater chance that they will be able to attract a loving partner, and be accepted within Western culture’s strict expectations.

            Coward also refers to Freud’s theory of the mirror phase, and his assertion that women are the more narcissistic sex, based on their more apparent obsession with appearance and self-image. Freud proposes that women need to be loved and admired, ‘and the man who fulfils this condition is the one who finds favour with them’; a somewhat shallow and unflattering view. If Freud’s view were correct, then it could be assumed that a narcissistic identification takes place when women view images of women in the media, as opposed to the desire experienced by men. Furthermore, images of ‘glamorous and highly sexualised’ women function as a mirror, appealing to women’s vanity and ‘their own fascination with their own image. Coward counters this by arguing that it is inaccurate to liken women’s fascination with self-image to Narcissus, as a woman’s fascination is more likely to be rooted in discontent than satisfaction. Rather than a ‘pleasurable identification’, women experience jealousy and anxiety when confronted with media’s glamorous images of femininity.

Coward’s focus on the experience of women perhaps unintentionally implies that men are not subjected to a comparable level of scrutiny. While there may not be the same level of interest in the male form from the media, it would be incorrect to assume that societal pressure and expectations are struggles unique to women. However, Coward raises some provocative questions regarding women’s own complacency and motivation to conform to stereotypes of femininity and desirability.