I need ideas ... broom 'character' {You guys have got to buy this - it's AWESOME}
WillowRaven
Posts: 3,724
I need to illustrate a children's book, middle-grade age range, where a broom has a personality and is an actual 'character'.
Do ya'll have any leads as to where I'd even start?
Post edited by WillowRaven on
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You could try to get some inspiration from the Disney 'Fantasia'. There are animated brooms in that.
There is a relevant clip on youtube for 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'.
Z Wizardry - Props and Poses for Genesis 8 Male and Female | Daz 3D
I was also thinking of Beauty and the Beast animated movie ... the feather duster... but are there any broom-like figures out there with bones for posing?
I think a lot would depend on what type of poses you need the broom to adopt. Does it speak? if so it needs a mouth, and if it needs to look at something it will need eyes.
For some types of cartoon the eyes could be just seperate disks which hover near the 'head'. It really depends on the style you want.
Maybe something as simple as a skirt attached to a long cylinder??
Maybe a poseable hair could be the bristles and just create some simple bones for the staff? Are there any morphing staffs floating around?
Perhaps you could rig one of the existing broom props. Maybe check out some of the tutorials to see if that is feasible.
You could use one of the existing poseable ropes with a wood texture as the staff part
Hmmm ... possible rope with hair for bristles? Maybe a poseable ponytail or horse/foal tail or two for the look of gravity as it 'stands' or moves??
Now I'm curious.
Is there a time period in mind? A certain style? Region of the world?
Does it need any kind of face or arms?
Do you use the renders as the illustrations? Post worked? Traced? Merely as reference?
Does the job pay enough that you could sub contract someone to make the broom? No? When's your deadline? Is there enough time for someone to make one and get it through qa and into the shop so you could buy it at a more affordable rate?
I would combine the DAZ Emoji character with different types of brooms, mops, shovels, & such tools from the DAZ Store.
How many illustrations do you need to do? Mesh Grabber turns even a static prop 'flexible', but if you are doing a large number, it may not be practical. I would use a morphed Twiglet and give him a straw skirt or twig-bundle base, maybe, if you wanted something with facial expressions and such.
So many questions, lol.
I'm thinking modern to medieval or fantasy times. It's for a young witch. But having style options would make a more versatile product since I'm sure to find more uses for a posable or morphing broom for either realistic or cartooned and NPR illos for other books in other genres and age groups.
Region ... European/North American cottage-style broom ... does that make sense? But I'd think even modern brooms that can 'break' or bend and be used with 'sweeping' morphs would benefit many people.
I don't think face or arms for this book since it's for older kids, but having one like that for the picture books would be super fun.
All of my renders get postwork, no matter what. I'm open to tracing using 3D as my guide, which is how I started using Daz back in DS3 days, but I have also gotten obsessed with merging traditional and digital styles to create a 'look.' Once I have a plan for the broom, I think that will help me decide the style for the rest of the book.
Unfortunately, this project is royalty-paid, meaning I only get paid a percentage of possible sales a year after the book is traditionally published, which takes years. I only took the job because it's a direction I don't have in my existing portfolio, and I want to include it for potential marketing for future freelance gigs, which pay in advance. So the less I invest, the better, including my time. If I have to learn to model, I will likely not go that route since I need a pay-gig while I work on the royalty gig.
Deadline... nothing fixed, but I'd like to get the human characters, as well as the broom character studies, for approval before starting scenes sometime in the next few months, maybe between August and December, since I can work on illos for a different book, for now.
As I'm already a fan of your work, I can wait for someone like you to create something to sell. I'll even do us art renders for promos and pimp it out on social media :D
I'll look at that option, too; still in the early stages. Thanks.
I just checked ... and I was wrong ... It's an early-reader chapter book ... transitional, so between picture book level and middle grade.
There are nine chapters, so nine full-page illos to introduce each chapter, then maybe a simplified spot illo or half-page scene every other spread ... in color drawing or painting style, perhaps? Again ... still in the early brainstorming stage.
Wonder how hard it would be to give it a small face with expressions like some of those magical trees?
My first thought would be a medieval broom with a flat plane that floats in front of the bristles that could have simple transmapped based emotions on it? like the doodle?
Another option might be something like the attached image, but more full length broom. maybe flip the face so that it's upright when the bristles are down.
SUCH COOL IDEAS!
What if the face was part of the top, above the 'tied' area where the wood and bristles attach, like a head?
I realize that JoeQuick is thinking about a broom for you @WillowRaven, but today I was looking at Triple Moon Cottage and found a great broom that looks real, along with other props that might be helpful for your project. Just thought I would bring it to your attention for the total quality of the set by SloshWerks.
That is a super-cool set I must have :)
I don't know how I'd give the broom a personality, but definitely need this set. Thanks :)
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The Clove Wytch broom is already rigged. Adding a face would be easy.
I'm glad you said that...
Allow me to introduce you to Broomy... Broomy has lots of "personality"...
Broomy has been through a lot... and because of his troubled past, he's had problems "expressing" his feelings in a "positive manner"... actually, in any manner other than a completely homicidal fashion.
But he's made progress... as you can see here, he's only holding a box cutter and a utility lighter... previously he'd be waving around a machete and flamethrower...
Despite all that, all the bad stuff, now he's actually smiling... I wouldn't try to hug him, especially given the stuff he's swept up, but I assure you that's not a completely sane smile.
Still, given that I found him in a steel cabinet I decided to rescue from a pile of junk someone got rid of, and apparently at some point the cabinet was previously being used to house a cat toilet ("litter box" to some), a fact that might have altered my decision to take said cabinet had I noticed the copious amounts of kitty litter...
But it was an old heavy gauge steel cabinet that was perfect for outdoor use and a little cat pee smell never stopped me from most things where cat pee might have been instrumental in other people's decision making process... technically, my decision making process is wildly divergent from the bulk of human decision making, but regardless, it was a very traumatic incident for Broomy.
When I found Broomy he was just a head... with very smelly bristles...
VERY smelly bristles...
In fact, because of that, I threw him into a pile of junk and scrap I was throwing out, but then a few days later I need something to scrub out a huge empty planter that a squirrel decided to drown himself in...
Two week old squirrel broth does not smell that great and I need to disinfect the hell out of the planter, so I found a busted up old broom handle and attached Broomy to it... despite Broomy being thoroughly disinfected in the process, I left him outside for over a year...
It wasn't anything he did... it wasn't his fault... but I felt the lingering stench of squirrel death hung over him somehow.
So l leaned him up against a tree and abandoned him in the woods hoping that the rain and elements would wash away the stigma of squirrelicide.
Maybe it was because he was poorly treated in his first home, maybe it was because he was involved in the cleanup of what could have been a squirrel crime scene (I failed to mention earlier, that I also used him to lift the dead squirrel out of the planter)... maybe it was the loneliness and rejection he felt being abandoned to the farthest perimeter of my property... maybe it was the fact that squirrels would torment him and accuse him of being involved in the drowning of Chester (I forgot to mention that I later found out the squirrel was named Chester)... (and he had a lot of gambling debts that no honest squirrel could ever hope to repay)... (not that any squirrels are actually honest by any practical measurements of honesty, which is also why I believe the drowning wasn't accidental, but so far my investigation has only yielded circumstantial evidence, nothing that would hold up in court)... (if squirrels could be tried in a criminal court for squirrelicide)...
Whatever the reason or reasons... Broomy changed...
At some point, all alone and abandoned, Broomy had fallen over and leaves covered him and bugs infested him... for over a year he lay there his anger and resentment festering...
When I found him, he was different... it's hard to say how particularly, but he was definitely more... "stabby"...
I tried to give him a new handle to make up for it, but none of the good ones fit him... so again he suffered another humiliation... that of a dollar store handle...
Also, I probably shouldn't have used him to kill cave crickets that keep showing up in my workshop, because he really seemed to enjoy that.
Way too much.
But, that's Broomy... There's a lot he still won't talk about... mostly because he's a broom and his mouth is just drawn on with a Sharpie, but he's going through therapy and it's making him less murderous... at least 12.7% at the moment.
I hope Broomy's story helps inspire you and gives you some perspective on the lives and personalities of ordinary tools and cleaning equipment that perhaps may not have occurred to you previously.
Good luck on your project.
I think I'd be leaning towards one of the two designs I showed. Can you show me what your head on top look would entail? In my head, it disrupts the form language I expect out of a broom, long, slender, and abrubtly fanning out at the end. But what I'm picturing might not at all be what you have in mind.
That's a fun-looking broom, though prob better suited to younger readers. Is that available as an OBJ so I could use it in Daz?
Looking at your doodle, my brain immediately saw a head with a face in the green area ...
Would a face sorta like this be hard to put in the round 'head' area? And then make the skirt area movable, so it has the feel of walking or standing or moving lie legs or arms or some means of self-expression and gesture?
https://www.daz3d.com/forest-spirits-tree-and-mushroom-for-genesis-9
I think matching the fibers with a head that's textured to look like fibers just wouldn't feel cohesive, and, getting a head made out of groomed fibers to also emote and stuff just seems like more work than the product would end up earning.
I think I would want to still make the head wooden and ornamental in some way. I've had a ghibli kind of aesthic in mind, initially thinking the earlier ideas might couple well with a ghibli ish version of a medieval witch outfit.
I appreciate what you've arrived at now though, with the idea of making a body of the fibers. I think that would bring it into standalone product teritory. It could be modeled and rigged anthropomorphized, and then a morph could turn the bristles into pure broom, with some additional morphs to simulate motion.
Sounding more and more awesome... If you seriously want to take this on, I can start finding the other figures and characters that will most match the style you have in mind. If you PM me the style to expect it to take on, I'll get permission to share the manuscript with you, or at least the relevant sections if you think it will help. I'll also give you a shout-out in my bio in the book.
https://www.daz3d.com/belladonnas-broomstick-brigade-enchanta-broom-original-figure
I LOVE IT !!!
I am grabbing it right now.
I am loving this broom ... please tell me lots of people are buying this!
I for sure did, and I stumbled across this little history of its creation afterwards. Makes me like the little fella even more
I'm always amazed by the modelers. At best, I'll Frankenstein something not available that I need, but when someone like JoeQuick goes the extra mile to fill a gap in the 3D world like this, and so far above my expectations, it makes me love the Daz community even more.