Baku Designs

I decided to go for a more traditional representation of the Baku, but I incorporated tapir elements int he markings - which I adore. Elephant head, lion's mane, tapir body, tiger legs, plus tail.
The girl - I've taken her face shape and high eyebrows from examples of Asian art. I will also give her a very light skin tone, as in Asian paintings. I also plan to give her a flowing night-dress, as a lot of Japanese and Chinese paintings depict flowing clothing and fabric in quite a distinct way.

Font Thoughts

I'd like to create my own font for this Baku book, but wasn't sure it would really work. So here is my own test-font in comparison to some of the more suitable fonts I have already in Photoshop.

The fonts I already have from Photoshop are so GENERIC. I actually had to check I wasn't using the same font over and over.
I do quite like my font. I certainly like it a lot more when compared to the Photoshop fonts.

I may look for suitable fonts to download, but as it stands, hand-drawn font is definitely the way to go.

Existing Bakus 2

 

 

Sources, in order:
http://flying-fox.deviantart.com/art/Baku-112472443?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=4
http://missmonster.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=baku#/d1v0y0a
http://chipboles.deviantart.com/art/Baku-Japanese-Dream-Eater-257241491?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=360
http://draconicaeaeon.deviantart.com/art/Baku-and-Dreams-of-Water-243686404?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=281
http://fafnirsheart.deviantart.com/art/Baku-complete-Detail-1-214639704?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=382
http://levi88.deviantart.com/art/Baku-176974803?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=108
http://deathofrats.deviantart.com/art/baku-260317882?q=boost%3Apopular%20baku&qo=6

These pieces all show varying depictions of the Baku, from faithful to the original descriptions, to tapirs, to just plain weird.
I love the detail in the first image, the colours in the second, the weirdness of the third, the effective blending of animals in the fourth, the true-to-its-origins style of the fifth, the cuteness and colours of the sixth, and the patterning in the seventh and last.

Existing Bakus 1

I have gathered some images of old and modern interpretations of the Baku that have caught my eye.

 3D pieces - The top right and bottom middle pieces show what seems to be a common pose for the Baku. I love the detailing in the bottom piece. It might be worth looking into making a small 3D object - reminiscent of the Japanese miniatures.
Paintings - Examples of the Baku int he style of Chinese and Japanese painting. I like the bottom left depiction of the dreams.

Sources:
http://www.yukoart.com/news/beasts.html
http://shop.creepyhollows.com/product.php?productid=2823
http://romanshowers.tumblr.com/post/2178512790
http://www.marshallastor.com/2008/03/21/netsuke-by-masatoshi-nakamura-tokisada-at-lacma/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_%28spirit%29
http://www.asianartmall.com/bakuarticle.htm

http://tokiokinder.livejournal.com/12998.html

I love this sculpture! I like the simplicity of the design and the colours, and the creature's nose.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/57381642/small-print-baku-dream-eater-japanese

A simple Baku as a tapir drawing. I have saved this as I love the simple drawing, the texture of the fur, and even the pose.

Baku

Baku, or "dream eaters", are creatures found in Chinese and Japanese folklore. They vary in description from an elephant head with the body of a lion, or a lion head, the body of a horse, the tail of a cow, and legs of a tiger, or more like a tapir.

http://akrainforest10.pbworks.com/f/1271288592/tapir1.jpg

 Baku protect people from the bad dreams by eating their nightmares, sometimes unbidden, but sometimes the dreamer must call upon the baku to help them, either in the dream or when they wake up. "Baku, devour this dream!" Sometimes the baku is said to change the eaten dreams to good luck.

Sometimes they are portrayed as troublemakers, eating all the dreams, not just the nightmares.

I like this creature in particular, because I have inherited the tendency from my mother to have nightmares every night. I can't remember the last time I had a good dream (and neither can she. My Psychology teacher said it must be something in our brain wiring), and all the usual good dreams such as the flying dreams that people talk about are completely alien to me. I would say that people are trying to kill me in about 75% of my dreams, and in the rest I'm in a stressful situation (such as driving a car with no brakes, or I'm trapped or paralysed and about to die, or someone I care about is about to die). A baku would have a feast fit for a king in my head.

This creature is obviously suited to children - parents in China and Japan would tell their children about the baku to reassure them at night. Therefore, I want to do a chldren's book. I also noticed in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford that China in particular made simple plushies with painted on features - I could make a plushie to go with the book.

Since I'm not great at writing, I enlisted the help of my best friend and she wrote a poem for me as a story. I absolutely love it. I'm now hoping I can get all this done in time for the London Book Fair, as I would love to show it off there.

The Urayuli

In Inuit and Alaskan folklore, the Urayuli, or "Hairy Men", are transformed children who got lost in the woods at night. They are described as having long arms and large glowing eyes. The idea of this piece was that it would be printed and folded into a tiny concertina, between 5 and 9cm tall, to show the stages of a lost child becoming a Urayuli.

1st frame: A child in a hide coat.
2nd: The coat puffs out to become fur, the child is slightly taller.
3rd: Taller again and antlers starting to appear. Their arms are now dragging along the ground.
4th: Growth spurt! The face is now obscured by fur.
5th: Fully transformed.
6th: The child finds others.

I wanted this piece to be inspired by the style of Inuit art, which uses mostly stark black and white. However, I had the image in my head of a style more suited to children's books. Whether this combination works or not, I'm not sure, but I definitely like the outcome.

I was originally going to do a series of lino cuts for this piece, but after printing a few test-cuts I felt they weren't good enough to justify using them for a final piece. Instead I have used a digital style with no shading and simple shapes. Only the texture I have overlaid offers range in tones. In my test lino cuts, I created a texture very similar to the one in the fur on this digital piece. I think it works better digitally.

I may come back to this and make a more lino-cut-ish, Inuit-ish version, but for now I am happy with how this came out.

Update: Which colour scheme looks best? Darkened this one, and upped the contrast, and fiddled a bit, trying to get a more "Inuit-y" colour scheme.

Fiddled with layers and thresholds for more of a black and white look, with a hint of colour and tone still in there so no everything is lost. Better than the one above.

 

Various Inuit experiments.
Top: Lino cuts. The first image shows my amazing plan of sticking paper cutouts to the lino so that I knew where to cut. This didn't work very well.
The second image shows my first attempt at a lino cut for the Uryuli piece. After spending hours on it, I printed it only to find that... I hadn't flipped the image.  Since I was planning on it being a concertina book, it was somewhat important that the figure be going in the other direction. I decided not to continue with the lino cuts as they had taken SO long, and I was afraid they might not be very clear with what was going on. I did, however, like the texture where I had done the fur trim of the coat.

Large image: A small figure made out of Super Sculpey based on Inuit sculpture. I love this little guy!

Tailypo in Colour?

Not sure about this... I like how it turns out on the smaller panel, but on any scenes with the trees especially, I feel it just ruins the detail I spent so many painstaking hours on.

I think I will save myself the time, and the money when it comes to printing out copies of this for the London Book Fair, and keep the comic in black and white. I may return to it later and hand in a coloured version at the final deadline, but then again I may not. I really don't want to ruin my details!

New Tailypo Storyboard

I am pleased wtih this version of the storyboard. I managed to cut down the pages quite significantly; from 20 to 16 (including cover and end papers). I have roughly kept to the idea of alternating panels with panel-less images, and no two pages are alike in their panelling. I decided to leave out the repetition of the dogs being sent out to chase away the creature and returning one less every time. It was a challenge to make that interesting in comic form, and to be honest I always find that bit of storytelling a bit clunky anyway. And I feel sorry for the dogs. This way, they just get wiped out along with their master when the creature attacks. I still feel sorry for them, but at least it's a quick death with no awkward repetition.

Tests!

I used the opportunity of a commission for my best friend to test out how the colouring method described before prints, and to see how well I could use Glow in the Dark Fimo to create glowing eyes on a plushie, as the Tailypo creature is described as having glowing eyes.

I was expecting the print-out to be pixellated, but it actually worked out very well, and though I did not get a photo in complete darkness the glowing eyes of the plushie are still noticeable.

A Dog!

The man in the story has 3 dogs, so the obvious place to go for reference would be my dog. She's a Collie cross something or other that looks a bit like a terrier and completely dominates the Collie genes. Because there is no way this dog looks like a Collie. I think she would be fantastic to model the dogs in the story on because of her eyebrows. She has an incredibly expressive face with those big white bushy eyebrows. The second video, of her eating a carrot, really shows off her brows.

Since she's very old now and doesn't move quite like she used to - just sleeps - I've combed through old videos and photos of her for references from a range of different angles and actions.

Creature Designs

I like the blank eye and the details around it. I love the ear. I like the high back and the small paws. I am not fond of the snout at all. I think it should be shorter. Quite creepy looking, which is good, as the story is a creepy one. Too creepy? I'm wondering if the eyes should be bigger?

 This version worked out very well, in my opinion. It is unique compared to the usual designs of the Tailypo creature. Combined features of a hyena, aardvark and alligator make a sort of bat-like appearance. I like the addition of the 'beard' on the chin, too. I will keep the hyena-style body with the high back and small hind quarters and then, obviously, a long tail. There is still potential to show the Cheshire Cat type grin with this design, but I'm planning on only showing that when the creature is about to attack near the end of the story. It was tempting to add antlers to the design, as in my rough sketch ont he original storyboard, but I decided this was too much.

 Colour test. Seeing if the method in the Copper tutorial works for my work. I was nervous about reducing hte lineart to purely black pixels with no anti aliasing, but it actually works quite well. Cross hatching complicates the process from what is described int he tutorial - it makes some areas impossible to select with the magic wand, but these can be painted seperately.

A Tailypo Plushie

I cannot resist the idea of making a plushie of the Tailypo creature (with a detachable tail! I'm thinking magnets!). In this project I intend to create a range of different 2D and 3D pieces, and I definitely want to improve my plushie making skills. As I mentioned in some of my research, the challenge will be in producing a plushie design which elements that allow for a high evel of customisation in order to make the plushies relate well to my illustrations.

The options are:

Using felt. I can cut out and sew, or needlefelt, shapes in felt mimicking the designs of an illustration for areas such as facial features.
Super Sculpey. A polymer clay that hardens when baked to become sandable, drillable, etc. I can carve 3D features inspired by my style of illustration for the story in mind.
Printing onto fabric. I can either buy fabric that can run through an ordinary printer, or buy some transfer paper, or use screen printing to get a 2D image onto fabric that can then be made into or added to a 3D plushie design. This would be a good method to use for future pieces from Chinese folklore, as in my visits to the Pitt Rivers museum I noticed a lot of Chinese fabric toys with the designs painted on.

I have made a very quick and small (and accidentally horrifyingly creepy) example plushie with both felt and Super Sculpey details.

I created the mouth out of Super Sculpey by making a mould from a badger skull mybrother found in the woods, and then painting the teeth white. If you ignore just how creepy this result is, it shows that I can add high customised details with both felt and Sculpey in order to link my plushie creations to the illustrations that inspired them.

The Tailypo Creature

Above are the previous inspirations for the creature design in 'Tailypo' (the creature is never actually named as Tailypo, it is looking for it's tailypo. The creature has no name). I liked the Cheshire Cat grin on the black and white one, by SelfRightousSuiside and the blank eyes. I also loved the designs by TurtleShelltered, as they deviate from the usual portrayals of the Tailypo creature, and have large, round glowing eyes. They are the only designs I have come across that don't look roughly the same as every other design (like the first image here, by Michael Wandelmaier.)

I would prefer to be original in my designs of the creature, like TurtleShelltered, rather than offer up a version of the over-used design. Including a Cheshire Cat-style grin could potentially look amazing.
 

 

Above: The Cheshire Cat from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and a sketch by Joshua Kenfield. I love the blue glowing eyes of the cat, and the really wide grin. It is quite subtly creepy. What I love about the sketch is the side-view, showing how far back the grin pulls the face. It is creepier than the front view.

 Style-wise, I love this piece by Viktor Miller-Gausa. The hatching is an effective method of shading the fur, leaving areas white for the highlights. The ears of the hares fit in well with designs for the Tailypo creature, and I love the way he has drawn the limbs.

As for my design of the creature, I will look back on my observation drawings from the Natural History Museum in Oxford. I will take pieces of various animals and 'stitch them together' to create one.

 

 I have picked out these particular pages for the elements of animals I will potentially use. I like the armadillo's body - I think it would be really interesting to draw as part of an unusual creature, and would offer an amazing pattern and texture for the scenes in which the creature appears. I like the ears of the hare, the hyena and the aardvark. The alligator's jaws would make a menacing mouth, and I like that a few teeth poke through or hang over the jaws. I like the body and markings of the hyena, with the high back, and the general face shape, and I like the paws and head of the fox.

I have tried copy-pasting various elements in Photoshop to inspire my creature designs.

Just a little bit... STRANGE.

I actually quite like the combination of the hyena and alligator! The ears are cute, though if I were to keep them I would have to change the proportions. The creature is often described and drawn as having very long ears, and I really like the effect in Viktor Miller-Gausa'a work above.