Our first homework task for the animation studio module was to pick three animated characters before breaking them down into basic form and shape. For my three characters I picked Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Fry from Futurama, and Alucard from Castlevania.
I chose Grim as my first character as I wanted to work with a very stylised character as my first experiment. I traced over a full body model of grim to work out his basic shapes. I found that the majority of his body is made up of stretched cylinders, and that his face is made up of a cube and a sphere. I also like that his hands are disconnected from his arms as it gives him a more supernatural look. I then looked at character models from the show bible and tried to freehand draw different facial expressions of grim using the reference. I think these turned out well but I think my line confidence needs work as I tend to use short quick lines instead of long curved lines.
I then chose Fry as my second character as Futurama was one of my favourite animations to watch when I was younger. I like that his outfit helps to convey his slacker personality. After tracing Fry I found that he is also mainly composed of cylinders. I then tried copying the style of Matt Groening without tracing so I sketched Fry in different poses and facial expressions. I think these turned out well but I still think I just need to work on my line confidence as I find this is my main problem that needs to be worked on.
For my final character I decided to analyse Alucard from the Castlevania netflix series. I chose this character as the last two were very stylised with unrealistic proportions and I wanted to analyse a more realistic looking character. I also felt his design was a lot more complex than Grim or Fry and I wanted to test my skills. I found that like Fry and Grim he was also mainly composed of cylinders.
I really enjoyed this exercise and it was fun analyzing what shapes help to make up some characters. it was interesting to see that the complex and simple characters still use mainly the same shapes just in different ways.