Modern and Historical Research (Hercules)

Hercules (The Roman name for the Greek Hero Heracles) the son of the Zeus. He is half god and is known for his strength. The Roman name became more popular due to more modern popular culture, such as disney, using the Roman name in their work on the character.

As a historical character Hercules has been shown to have many contradictory characteristics so artists often pick and choose his characteristics, depending on what they need from the character for the story they are wishing to pursue.

(Hercules and the Hydra (1475) by Antonio Del Pollaiuolo)

An iconic item that is commonly used to show that an illustration is of Hercules would be that of the lion skin shown in his many older illustrations. This was shown even in the disney movie, as at one point he is shown wearing the skin of another disney character Scar (The Lion King) as a joke reference but also a nod to his original design work.

 

(Disney image of him wearing the skin)

When disney took on Hercules on they had to change a lot of things, one of the main ones being costume. They needed their character to be much less threatening as he’s directed at children, so he has a much softer face, more clothing and less facial hair, allowing him to have more of the ‘pretty boy’ styling.

 

The things that are constant in most of his illustrations though are the body, that of an almost triangular shape, with big strong arms and legs and chest, with a small waist and large chin. This is an iconicity manly body, showing strength and power. However when he’s younger he is shown as very week and frail. This relates well to the idea of energising that we are working on for our campaign.

Client – Red Bull (Ideas from group discussion)

After discussion with the rest of the group we came the the decision that we would pursue the Red Bull Campaign. We feel that our illustrative skills will relate well to the mythical creatures idea and that we can think of more interesting characters to pursue from this brief.
We discussed ideas for characters that would be interesting to pursue, considering they must relate well to the idea of rejuvenation and energising. The characters we all initially thought of were; Hercules, Icarus, Hermes and Thor.

So we discussed the idea that our work will focus on gods and iconic characters rather than creatures, and talked about how we would be able to make these characters recognisable. We discussed the idea that all of these characters (Bar Icarus) have been featured in modern cartooning. For Hercules and Hermes Disney, and Thor, Marvel Comics.
Once we had came to that desiccation we set ourselves the work of looking at these versions of the characters and trying to find what it is they used to make these characters recognisable, and how that relates to their original designs.

TD; Research into these characters famous interpretations and original interpretations for ideas on how to make these characters recognisable.

Research (28/01/2014) (2)

‘Red Bull Gives you Wings’ – Campaign

(Image from the campaign)

Red Bull’s ‘Red Bull gives you wings’ is probably the most famous energy drink campaign to date. The images and TV advertisements they went forward with often showed iconic and recognisable characters or ideas, twisted with the modern addission of the character always drinking a can of red bull to get them out of a tough situation. This campaign ran for many years and now the modern advertisements still feature a lot of the same ideas from the original campaign). Red Bull developed a distinct and original animation style in the tv adverts, using wobbling line animation and very cartoony characters to direct their advertisements at a young adult audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K31dg86OmuM

(Example of their old Advertisements for TV)

This style however now has become slightly outdated and has less of an effect on a younger audience.

(Example of the animation style used in their Tv Adverts)

Summery; The Red Bull campaign ran for many years and is still well loved, the iconic characters and charming animation style mixed with comedy worked well but it could use a revamp to be more affective towards a younger, more modern audience.

TD; Decide on which client we will be working on and start on our character ideas and research.