Designing the Dwen

Reader, you have no idea. This has been perhaps the longest part of making this film so far. The Dwen from Trinidadian folklore is described as having:

-no features on its face
-a small mouth
-the body of a small child
-feet which are twisted backwards (heels at the front, toes at the back)
-occasionally wearing a straw hat

Do you know what it looks like when you draw backwards feet? Like you don't know how to draw feet.

I'd also been batting around the idea that the finished film would look like a shadow puppet show. This would mean that the audience would have to be able to distinguish the Dwen apart from other regular children from its silhouette only. Strictly sticking to the above criteria, the Dwen looked more like a sad kid than anything.

So I made it a skeleton. Then dropped the idea of shadow puppets entirely. I'll let the rest of the design process explain itself. It boils down to a lot of drawing and figuring.

 

 

And the final design...