{"id":497,"date":"2024-11-20T09:42:32","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T09:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameliepritchard.co.uk\/?page_id=497"},"modified":"2025-02-27T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T14:58:14","slug":"the-parade-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ameliepritchard.co.uk\/?page_id=497","title":{"rendered":"The parade project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parade – Jean Cocteau<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Drawing the characters whilst watching the first act of parade.
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The characters I am choosing:<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

For this project we were tasked with choosing three of the characters from the ballet and creating our own version of the ballet. Below I have listed the characters I will be emulating for my own production. These include: The Chinese conjuror, The American Girl and The French Manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Chinese Conjuror<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThe Chinese conjuror is the star of the first act of Parade\u201d. He is inspired by real life Chinese magician, Ching Ling Soo. Ching Ling Soo was a celebrity who was widely known in Paris at the time parade premiered\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The American Girl<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThe little American Girl is a mixture of American cinema and American influenced music hall. The character is based on American film stars, Pearl White and Mary Pickford\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The French manager<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThe three managers were considered to be the most cubist and therefore the most shocking the ballet. The French manager moved in a jerky staccato manner, stomping his feet and banging his walking tick on the floor to attract the attention of the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exploring Cubism<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Artist research<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Pablo Picasso – Between 1907 and 1917, Picasso “reshaped” art history with his cubist period. Picasso’s cubism flattened reality into a single plane of geometric shapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To further understand parade, we looked at cubism, as most of the costume designs for Parade were created using this style. As a class we watched a tutorial on how to create a Cubist piece, using an shape we wanted to, this was really interesting as it helped to break down how Picasso made his costume pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My response<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After breaking down how to make a cubist piece I wanted to redraw Picasso’s design of the French manager, especially to get an understanding of how his costume is built up. It was another exercise to create a collage, so I took Picassos design and created using basic newspaper cuttings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initial Ideas<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

After choosing which Parade characters I wanted to explore, I started with the idea of each character taking a different shape, all different heights and widths. Then based on the original costumes I drew my brief ideas for each character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artist Research<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Josh Wong<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh Wong is a character designer, who develops his characters by drawings loads of different versions eventually narrowing them down once he gets to his desired style. This ensures that by the time he has reached his final design he has the utmost confidence in how they work and appear. I like the way the artist draws these characters repeatedly in different poses and outfits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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American Girl<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Photos from Pinterest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Using the same technique I drew my character in Picasso’s style, just to see how it would fit into the original style.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Artist Research<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Researching character design in Kung Fu Panda<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The character designers for Kung Fu Panda created the character from the idea that he needed to be able to complete different kung Fu poses, placing him in typical Chinese clothing in order to complete the design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The move is from a wuxia genre version of ancient China populated by anthropomorphic talking animals, as a result, the costuming for the characters takes inspiration from these genres, using armour and fabrics typically seen within martial arts. Whilst I wanted to look into how they generated the costumes for the characters, martial arts costuming is far away from the conjuring uniform I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, the creators did give an interesting point, surrounding designing the costume around the panda rather than, forcing the panda to fit into the costume I need. This influenced me to draw a panda in different poses based on multiple videos I watched online. Obviously pandas don’t typically walk around the way a character panda would, but analysing their movements is helpful towards the type of character I want to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chinese conjuror<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Photos from Pinterest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the character of the Chinese Conjuror I wanted to look at the famous Chinese panda, Hua Hua, since after reading Chung Ling Soo’s background, their level of worldwide fame surrounding an exaggerated character mirrored each other. Hua Hua got famous on the internet for her unique appearance and gentle personality, resulting in large amounts of tourism to the Chengdu Panda Base, with tourists lining up half an hour before the base opens and waiting for hours simply to get a glimpse of her in her exhibit, similar to the actor going by the name Chung Ling Soo, Robinson was a popular stage magician in Europe and eventually became one of the highest-paid performers on the vaudeville circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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References from photos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by my research into Kung Fu Pandas character designs, I watched different videos of the Panda Hua Hua, sketching her in different poses in order to understand how a panda would wear clothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The French manager<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Based on the French Managers original design, I tried to de-cubify it to fit in with the styling of my other characters, initially this is the design I went with for my manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As you can see I was incredibly indecisive with designing my character, in comparison to the other two I definitely felt he was the weaker of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combining the characters <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In order to test my doubts, I drew all of the characters together, working out the height difference for all of the characters, this massively influenced my choice to change my character, I felt as though he was a really generic character, and compared to the other two I had no passion for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Redesigning the French Manager<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Photos from Pinterest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Combining the finished characters<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Storyboard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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The product<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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