During the week after our group was formed, we decided to each draw concepts of our favourite idea so we could decide which was our favourite. I decided to draw 2 character concepts for my elements idea. I took inspiration from actual elements of nature, and cartoon symbols of the 4 elements. Even though they didn’t get picked, I am still very happy with them and feel as though they would be simple to animate if we choose to use them for a future project.
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After everyone showed their concepts, we decided on a plant who is too cute/shy to scare like his peers. By the end of the animation, he learns how to scare. The armature of the animation, which is the lesson of the film that the creators want the audience to think about whilst watching the animation, is everyone develops at their own pace. We all then began drawing concepts for this animation. We decided there would be 1 small monster who couldn’t scare, 3 large monsters who the small monster looked up to, and a small creature who the small monster would try to scare throughout the animation. I began researching scary plants to use as references for the monsters, specifically the 3 large monsters. On the planteria group website, I found the top 10 scary plants. The ones I found most interesting and felt as though I could incorporate into a character were the cuscuta – strangle tare, bladderwort, white baneberry (doll’s eyes), the corpse flower, and the brain cactus.
I then looked up other plants such as tulips and plant bulbs as I felt like these rounder and ore colourful shapes would work better for the small creature. As a group, we also decided we wanted to incorporate skulls into the character designs as we felt a graveyard would be a good environment for the animation. This would then link the characters well to the environment. As coco is one of my favourite movies, I researched designs, models, and film screenshots to base the characters on. I also found images from an old Disney animation called ‘the Skeleton Dance’ to base my characters on.
I first drew a concept design for the small monster character, as I already had an idea for him, and he sounded like he would be my favourite character from out group discussions. At this point, we didn’t know how the environment was going to look or how it was going to be affected by lighting, so I simply chose colours that I thought would work well with the character. I began by doing a couple of sketches of tulip petals, so I could get the right shape and form for designing the character. Through my research, I found that the red tulips were my favourite, so I drew red petals so the characters body and folded them in half so the head would be revealed. I wanted him to have bright eyes to contrast with the dark, hollowed out areas of the skull. I took inspiration here from the main villain from ‘league of super evil’ so that even though he was a cute character, he had an evil element to him. After I finished these designs, I changed the colour of the petals to blue to see which suited him better. Everyone from my group agreed that the red suited him more.
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I also drew four quick sketches for the other characters and developed my favourite ones further. For this monster, I used the flower of the bladderwort for the head, the white baneberry for the eyes and skeleton and the corpse flower for the arms, incorporating 3 different scary plants into the design. I feel as though giving him long, thin pupils instead of large, round ones gives him a creepier look, as if he is focusing on you and only you.
For this design, I kept to the same body design as the previous monster, but gave him a skull head instead, so there were similarities between both the small monster and the other monster. I changed his eye colour to red instead of keeping it yellow/amber like the small monster, so he looked eviller. As our characters are not allowed to have legs for this assessment, I gave this character large, flat hands as a way of moving.
For my final character design, I imagined the small creature who the small monster tries to scare as a worm. Something so small that seems easy to scare, yet he still doesn’t succeed. Even though I wanted him to have exaggerated characteristics such as a large head and eyes to show his expressions in a better way, I still wanted him to look like a worm, so I researched images of real worms and used a colour palette similar to them. At the end of the animation, the small monster would gai the confidence to scare the worm, so I also drew different expressions to use for the animation.
For the environment, we had agreed on a graveyard so me, Jasmin and Cloe designed a graveyard each for the animation. There is an old graveyard near where I live, so I took images there to use as references. I began by drawing a quick sketch, then doing a line drawing on top of that so I could get the right shape for the gravestones as there were a few different shapes. There were many gravestones in the graveyard, so I took some out so there would be enough room for the monsters to walk/move around. I then added some colour to the environment. After finishing the first drawing, I felt as though there wasn’t enough contrast between the highlights and shadows, so I re drew some of the colours to give the image more depth. I’m happy with how the final product came out and feel the environment looks quite creepy.
For the final monster designs, we decided to stick with Jorja’s skull design. Everyone in the group chose their favourite character, and we’re each going to design and rig our favourites. I was allocated the small monster, Jorja, Cloe and Jasmin are creating the three big monsters and Lydia will be creating the small creature. As the small monster is my character, I re-drew him to fit our new design. I kept the same basic body, however, I took away his eyes and gave him large teeth instead of a mouth. The others are giving their monsters 4 teeth, however, I decided to give mine 3 as I thought it would make him look younger and a little cuter than the other monsters. I also thought it would look a little strange to have his head simply floating above the petals, so I sketched out two different neck/spine designs to fit with the style of the character.
Groups designs – Cloe:
Jorja:
Jasmin:
Lydia:
