Week 4 Day 2 & 3: Concept Art and Character Design

For this week I decided to start thinking about the characters for my story, and in particular what they would look like. At the beginning of the FMP I conducted a lot of research on concept art and various character designs from different films.

I concluded that I wanted to create my animation on flash and so I began designing a variety of characters. I tried different styles however I was not happy with the first style I developed and so I started to look at other animation styles. In particular, the more cartoon style which I thought would be fun to create. It may not sound like such a risk, however for me as a drawer I tend to draw quite messily and sketchy. Using this kind of style, I had to decide on one bold line which is completely different to what I usually produce. I found this extremely difficult and time consuming, however I was pleased with the results.

                                                                                                                  

Fig 1 : First attempt at character designs (2014) Authors Own

For this character style sheet I was not pleased with it as I found it too flat and the colours used weren't bold enough. These characters did not stand out nor do they have much personality. I looked through my character concept research over again and considered further different styles. I found that I could enhance the character by creating it with black outlines. This made the colours stand out more.

                Fig 2 : Concept Character Design (2014) Authors Own

I was quite happy with the outcome of the animation style for this character although I didn’t feel that the character itself was appropriate for my story. I experimented with different faces for this character; I stretched, scaled, drew over and used my imagination to create different looking faces. I was intrigued by the face on the bottom far right as it didn't look as human-like as the others. I thought to myself that maybe my main character can be something else than human however I need to find a way for the spectator to relate to the non-human character. 

I went ahead and thought of all the different things that this person could be, relating to its physique. I liked the idea of this character being a troll and so I went ahead and created another character design for him. 

Fig 3 : Concept Character Design Troll (2014) Authors Own

On Tuesday, I received feedback from my Tutor who told me that this character resembled too much to Yoda. I hadn't realised it until he told me and so straight away I thought of the ways in which I could modify it. I did some research on trolls and what they wear. I decided to make the character taller and wear trousers instead of a cape. The character soon became de-Yodalised!

Fig 4: Final Character Design: Marcus (2014) Authors Own

This turned out to be my final design as to which I spent hours on, however it was worth every hour and I am extremely happy with the outcome. I am excited to begin animating Marcus the troll.