The Morphing of Kamila

Kamila the baby sister of Kalifa has the look that will melt the heart. It's the look I had pictured in my mind since day one. I just couldn’t get it right on paper because it is easier to draw what’s in front of me rather than what inside my head. That’s why a figure drawing class is also known as life drawing class because the subject is alive in front of us. There’s where we develop the skill of translating what we see onto the canvas or paper.

In the 3D world we are deprived of all traditional tools of ours. That doesn’t mean we cannot be creative. We still have the skill of translating what we saw onto the screen using the mouse or digitizing pen. It is difficult to create the model from nothing. The intuitive method is by morphing. I start by using an available base model which is on the left and shape it using the morph targets to make it look like on the right. The process is like clay modeling. An understanding of anatomy is a great asset to get the shape right. Finally the ethnic flavouring was done in Photoshop by painting the face map in 2D.

Unlike the other characters that I had done the reference for Kamila’s face didn’t come from war news photo. It was a photo from a medical news article about a bubble boy. But Kamila is a girl so some gender bending was needed. But for a 3-4 year old child the difference is not that obvious. 

The piggy tail hair was added from library. The colour was toned darker to match her Arabian look. There is no need to build from scratch since the element is readily available. But can the design be claimed as original because the original source is not my own? If it is just a pure cut and paste or tracing other people’s work than it’s plagiarism. To qualify as an original the work it has to go through an extensive creative process that represent my expression and not others. Like if the two characters above stood in a police lineup they will definitely be identified as two separate person. The left is a product of someone else’s expression while the right is my expression of the little girl Kamila. That qualifies as an original and an intellectual property that is protected by the copyright law.

 One thing for sure that the things I design from scratch for all the characters are the costumes. Kamila is a peasant girl whose parents live a simple and basic life. There are no sign of luxury in their home even in their clothing. There are no laces or embroidery. Just a simple plain coloured dress without flowery print. The other reason for the simplicity in design is because of emphasis. The emphasis for most of the character are their faces. It remind us strongly that they are humans.

Sometime we forget about the human element because we are too preoccupied with materialism. That is why in our modern wars like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and especially Palestine we witness so much atrocities been committed. The soldiers who are material centric have forgotten about humanity. If the soldiers on the ground could easily forget that basic human perception then how about the one in the air or the ones who sit remotely in their bases on their computers and taking human lives like a video game. Then what about their leaders who hide cowardly thousand of miles away and ordered the killings without having to smell the death personally. At the end of the day the smell of the profits that matters.

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