Choosing the pose for my sculpture of Ponyo was one of my easier choices whereas deciding on what she will actually look like on the other hand is very difficult indeed. When in my designing stage I had to keep in mind the key attributes that needed to be included: 5 year old, girl, Japanese, untooned, Ponyo. She would obviously need to look like Ponyo's original design but there are many different ways she could still look if I'm going to be untooning her. For example I could design her as realistic as possible, or more frog/fish like, big lips or small lips, there are endless possibilities.
This was an early drawing before I realised I needed to draw her as Japanese, Ponyo is an amination made by Hayao Miyazaki and is set in Tomonoura, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan and so it only makes sense that I create the real life Ponyo as Japanese.
Asians are physically different in some ways as stated on factsanddetails.com for example, it is very common to have straight, black hair and dark eyes. They also tend to have less hair, flatter faces, smaller noses, wider cheekbones, and epicanthic folds on their eyes. Asian people can also have natural red hair however it is quite rare. Ponyo is a magical half fish half human. She is represented as a goldfish which are stereotypically orange (like ginger/red hair) and being magical too I am sure that’s part of the reason why she has red hair (the little mermaid has red hair too.) Taking all of this into account as well as the character Ponyo's cartoon proportions I have drawn out a few designs
In drawing so many ideas I struggled to pick my favourite and the one that portrayed Ponyo the best especially in an untooned realistic look. I created a poll on my makers Instagram account where my followers could pick their favourite and from that I had narrowed down to a few favourites being the top three of the designs shown above.
From looking at my designs and constantly comparing them to the original scene I have chosen one of my first designs however modifying it by switching the nose and hair out with one of the other designs, this design has not been made too realistic meaning she does not portray an odd, creepy girl, it rather shows the sad and cute little girl that is wanting to be human.
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