Research - Chris Sasaki

I was unaware about Chris Sasaki until recently when we were fortunate enough to have him as a guest speaker. He spoke at length about his job at pixar and his education. I found the talk inspiring regarding the way he works, his overall process and one of the biggest things he put emphasis on was how much research he does before he goes into designing characters. This put my mind at ease because previously I thought perhaps I was doing too much research at the beginning of projects but he put my mind at ease when he said he takes a large percentage of projects just doing research alone before he starts drawing or painting for example. Another thing I took away from his talk was that he tries to use a mix of media, both traditional and digital. This again was helpful to me because I really like using traditional media and incorporating its qualities into digital production work but I had found myself doing that less and less, so in a sense it rekindled my desire to do it and experiment a little further within my work.

I really like Chris Sasaki's illustrative design style, it's incredibly unique, perhaps what makes him appropriate as a pixar character designer. It's interesting because despite the simplicity of the lines, and the overall subjects it really speaks to the viewer and relays a large amount of information just through the simple lines and tones he uses. I think especially with the first one, which is done with traditional media it's incredibly suggestive and stylised but you know immediately what it is without it being too obscure. When it comes to design like I mentioned in the post about Paranorman and the unique design style that LAIKA has, it's always fun and inspiring to see how artists and designers get the balance so right when it comes to having a unique and original style and approach but also maintaining the correct level of design and appropriateness for the audience. You can tell with the second image I have used that Chris Sasaki is a character artist purely due to the amount of character that comes through with such a simple design. The use of expression and pose here show the characteristics of the animal and despite being quite unrealistic, it is still a very relatable design. When we had the talk with Chris Sasaki, somethings that he spoke about were quite eye opening, because he said that he didn't get into the art school he wanted to and that things like that aren't necessary to break into the industry you want to build a career in, I guess ultimately it showed us that it's basically up to the individual how far they want to and can go.