Our next coursework assignment was to use all the principles we had learned in the previous assignment and create a 10-15 second animation with the them of ‘WELCOME TO THE MULTIVERSE’.

I mulled over a variety of ideas for this before starting anything. As my industry experience was mostly in backgrounds I originally thought to focus on a simple looping animation with multiple changing backgrounds. This materialised as an idea about a boy scientist building a dimension hopper that was attached to his skateboard which he’d ride through several dimensions that would be represented by the changing backgrounds behind him.
The other idea was a guy waiting at traffic lights that exaggerated in his mind how long the wait was by imaging himself living numerous lifetimes. While this would also feature changing backgrounds but it would feature the main character changing with them, becoming an alternate version of himself each time. This idea didn’t see any visualisation but I did draw up several little sketches for the boy scientist idea below.

 

I didn’t really like any of the ideas I was coming up with for the boys design so I started playing around with the idea of making him an animal. I began by making him a gecko (see last image above) and then moved onto a fox and rat. I then experimented with maybe making the animation a He-Man spoof with a a super muscular man picking up a magic weapon and then being transformed into this nerdy weakling. I dropped this though as I felt this didn’t really represent the ‘multiverse’ theme very well.

As I mulled it over further I got a hit of inspiration from the rat design above. I decided my animation would feature a brainless cartoon lab rat sent in to activate a teleporter, from which then appears a giant monsterous hand which grabs him and pulls him in. Simple, straightforward but with enough potential for experimentation.

For the end of the first week on the assignment we had to present a short slide show detailing what the idea was going to be about, which you can find below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hbElTapQTS5QLGNUcD3ift0QNqAWeCCDPNZuoTY7Cnc/edit?usp=sharing

Slides 4-5 show what I was looking at initially in regards to the visual design. I wanted a character that the had big head small body proportions with a graphic contempary art style. Bright colours and thick outlines.

In regards to how it would move I imagine it’ll look something like this Alien Homind trailer by The Behemoth (2020). Bright with slightly uneven thick lines and very obviously done digitally.

I also however found these in game animations for Wonder Boy: Dragon’s Trap created by Ben Fiquet (2017) which look fantastic. They’re a little more ‘traditional’ feeling that I’m intending to go for but I like the idea of experimenting with some smear animation if I can get an opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came across these animations by BARRACREWDA (2021) and Ditte Wad, Vaibhav Keswani and Amanda J. Holm (2021) respectfully. The first by BARRACREWDA is what I imagine my final animation will actually look like in regards to a finished product since animation is a time consuming endeavor and colour isn’t required for the final hand-in.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CV50dCqKGVM/

I liked the looping aspect of Wad, Keswani and Holm’s animation which I think is something I’m going to try and replicate for my own. Idealy it’d create it as a loopable Instagram video but since the hand-in requirements specifically state 1920×1080 I’ll probably have to scrap that idea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CVsV5iYKr83/

Now I had all my research gathered together I went back to my original lab rat design, which really didn’t read like a rat, especially in comparison with another rat doodle I did in the office. The design read too much like a fox or dog (not surprising since he was originally a fox) so I took what aspects I liked from my other rat design and started there.

If you’re ever going to do character design I highly reconmend Stephen Silver’s The Silver Way (2017). Silver was the character designer on Kim Possible and Danny Phantom and his book has wonderful pointers on how to approach character design. I followed a slight variation of what he discuss’ in his book. I knew my character was only ever going to be seen from one angle so I didn’t worry too much about his 3D form, in fact I actually steered into the flat 2D design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To begin with Silver reconmends to start by drawing a dozen different rough thumbnails for the basic shapes of your character. Before I started my thumbanils though I gathered a few images of rats and tried to break down their silhouette down into recognisable and easily read shapes.

I looked at rats from different angles to give me more shapes to play around when I was designing.

 

I knew I wanted to keep close to the small body, big head proportions but I also knew the importance of experimenting with my designs so I pushed the design more between 8-9, which I unsurpsingly didn’t like. I tried to incoporate part of the rat’s back arch into the design but that ended up giving him a “Quasimodo” feel which I didn’t like, but since he was meant to be the first ‘explorer’ through an interdimensional portal I tried to mix the arch into his design as an air tank on some kind of space suit but the silhouette read too much like a dog.

Number 16 was close to being my favourite and I do actually like it as a design but there was something about number 6 which was closer to my original big head, small body proportion. Once I honed into on number 6 I then started doing thumbnails of variations based on that design.

Again, I knew my character was only going to be seen from one angle so I was free to really utilise basic shapes, I also knew this would help me a lot when I was actually animating the little guy.
In the end I choose number 23. It had the right proportions and shape design, plus I felt it was actual going to be practical in regards to what movements I had planned in the animation.

The next step Silver advises is to take your basic thumbnails and begin adding more detail, especially regarding the face.

Silver also reconmends having a strong idea of who your character is meant to be as your designing them. In the back of mind I always returned to the idea that this was meant to be a expendable brainless lab rat so I wanted to make sure his face conveyed that empty goofiness.

I knew a large part of the character’s brainlessness would be conveyed through the eyes. So my exploration of his face focused on variations between eye shapes, the distance of his eyes together and his the placement of his pupils. Characters with pupils closer to together appear more alert and focused but if you put them really close together it can make them look distracted or nose focused. Putting the pupils further apart makes a character look more ‘derpy’ or clueless. Lowered eye lids can also make a charcter look sleepy or dopey but if you’re not careful it’ll make them look confident or smug.

Eventually I settled on 8 and 9 which I singled out and experimented with further.

Here I was mostly playing around again with pupil and mouth placement. I knew in the animation the character would be required to scream and where his mouth opened could drastically effect his head shape. Since I was sticking to basic shapes for his design I decided to keep his mouth front facing rather than give myself extra hassle by placing it somewhere that would ‘break’ his silhouette. Eventually I settled on number 4, which I felt made him look subtly brainless but also had a bit of perky energy to him.

 

With 4 as my final design the next step was to take it into colours. I was originally inspired by the internet sci-fi horror forum SCP which uses death row inmates as expendable test subjects, so when I first started with colours I pictured him in an orange jumpsuit. When I showed it to people in the office though they found it confusing as to why he was in a prison jumpsuit, especially since the explanation wasn’t going to feature in the actual animation. I then started looking at the outfits of astronauts and test pilots. Eventually I decided on 4, a science blue with the classic lab rat white. I decided to off set the white by making his eyes and teeth a slight yellow rather than a purer white.

In conclusion I’m very happy with how this turned out. His design is bold, graphic and contains that big head, small body proportion that I was striving for from the begining. I also felt it would serve all my staging requirements I had in mind for the animation. The next step was to experiment with his expression sheets.