The more realistic you design a character the more relatable it will be to your audience. By choosing the character Ponyo I must make sure I encapsulate her personality and story through her facial features and posture. I wanted to create Ponyo in a new light, I wanted to see her as realistic as though she is sitting right next to me. In my research I came across the phrase Untooning which is almost half realistic and cartoon at the same time and I really enjoyed some of the examples I had found.
What is untooning?
The term untooning refers to the trend started by a designer called Pixeloo in 2008 where you take a 2D drawing of a cartoon or animated character and recreate it with photorealistic details while maintaining the same proportions of the cartoon. Untoons are usually digitally enhanced photos, using a combination of painting and image collaging. The technique that blew up in 2008 was a new way for fans to bring to life their beloved cartoon characters allowing themselves to delve deeper in the escapism of fantasy, some can either be seen as cute or weird and creepy.
Jessica Rabbit – Pixeloo
This is a really good example of untooning by the original artist Pixeloo. The left image shows us the original cartoon, you can see that he has kept all the same proportions and has used multiple photos of existing people to combine and merge together to create the untoned version on the right. Even though the proportions are the same, the finished version is incredibly realistic due to the textures of the hair, skin and lips.
Popeye – Rick Baker
Rick Baker known for working on many Hollywood films created this realistic version of Popeye using the digital modelling software ZBrush. He has managed to make it highly realistic especially with the use of the wrinkles and attention to detail in the eye. The only thing that brings it down for me is that it looks more like a game character because of how it is rendered, Rick has still managed to create an amazing untooned character despite this.
Homer Simpson - Miguel Vasquez
This piece is one of my favourites and also one of the most creepy looking untoned characters I’ve seen. Miguel Vasquez is a digital 3D character artist, a lot of his work has the similar scary vibe that people have described as nightmare inducing. I want my design of Ponyo to look as realistic as this design however not as creepy as I will be directing my sculpture to an audience of cartoon/Studio Ghibli fans and museum goers.
I have been really inspired by these particular interpretations of cartoon characters, it's very humorous and interesting to see how a cartoon character would look like in the real world and to be able to show that much enthusiasm for the cartoon itself shows the culture behind these fandoms. I'm going to untoon Ponyo for these reasons as well as to make people smile (hopefully Miyazaki too!). To make the character Ponyo as an untooned character I will need to keep the original proportions the same and focus on adding minute details to my sculpture, like the texture of the skin, colouring as well as the hair and clothes.
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