character design analysis: Tano Bonfanti

 Analysis

The first thing I was reminded of when I decided to analyze this piece today was it reminded me of Anthony's talk about using a shape such as a circle to unify a design that has all kinds of shapes throughout. In this piece we see a lot of triangular designs in the sides of the shoulder pads that stick out like wings, the dagger, or the headpiece that juts out from the top of the head. On the bottom portion of the piece we see more rectangular shapes being used with the long dress like covering that extends to the floor. The anatomy itself feels rather triangular similar with the forearms, fingers and feet being pretty pointy. Then we have this triangular shape reflected in other ways such as the small ribbon like forms that extend from the shoulder pads and there's even an in cut that is similar to this in the shoulder pads.

One could say this design is triangular but I think we could say what really unifies this piece is the circular design that offsets this from being a purely triangular design. Really when we look at it there is not a portion of this that doesn't have a circular design embedded into it in some way. They come in a more variety of forms, such as the in cut circles that start at the top of the triangular form on the head. These even have a repeat pattern of little white dots that surround them. 

As we go down the piece we see the circular objects  now are protruding and we could say these objects counterbalance against the in cut shapes on the head. These circular objects extend outwards and crowd around her head like hair. Going down more now we see small red dots on the rectangular shapes that extend up from the shoulder pads and the small circle shapes on the pads underneath. 

Now to the chest piece we see this contrast of circular shapes that are in cut into the armor and then circular shapes that extend out of the armor that have repeat patterns of circles within them.  Then the rest of the design we see has fewer circles and these are really only concentrated on the quad of the leg and the handle of the knife. 

This piece was done by Tano Bonfanti, you can find more of his work here.