Louisa May Alcott - Animation Character Puppet Creation - Step 1 - Reference Pictures

There will be a number of posts detailing how I make the Louisa May Alcott animation puppet, from reference pictures all the way to animated puppet including sculpting, moulding, casting, armature, painting , wigging, costuming and accessories.

Step 1 is to find as many reference pictures as you can on your subject, or if you're creating one from scratch then sketch as much as you can of the character with different expressions, poses and angles. Not just of the face but the hands, outfits, hairstyles and in different settings. Remember to do some whole body sketches not just the face. I find it  helps to use a number of different media from pencil or acrylics to digital.

If you are starting off with reference pictures then the Step 1b will be to sketch the character as it helps you become familiar with them before you begin sculpting.

Here are my reference pictures for Louisa May Alcott. There aren't too many out there but this is a good starting selection:-

These are all head shots of Louisa at different ages. I've cropped each picture and adjusted the brightness and contrast to make them clearer. If you'd like to know how to combine pictures into a collage like this in Photoshop I'll be posting how to do that (add link here).

Here are some full length pictures of Louisa so you can see a little more how her dress looked in that time period and how she tended to wear her hair:-

This composition shows the one full length photo I've found. 

There are a number of films of a similar era that show the dresses of the time so those will be in another post. I have also posted about how I've composed these pictures in Photoshop here Photoshop Compositing

It is a good idea to  keep a note of where you found all your pictures (including links) in order to credit the source should you be publishing your research.