When we were first given this task, I planned on creating a very simplistic character as I have no previous experience in animation. However, after completing the tasks during the online lecture I felt my confidence grow a little so I decided that my character would have some, but still limited, details. From the beginning, I didn’t want to create a person as my character but one that would appeal to a younger audience. So, I decided to use my dog as my reference and come up with a character that resembled a children’s cartoon. After finalising my character sheet, I was able to begin my sketches toward the final character design.

Before creating my sketches, I carried out some research of some animated characters that I felt resembled the character I hoped to create. The first one came to mind straight away which was Stitch from ‘Lilo & Stitch’ as it’s personality and size is similar to how I wanted to portray my own character. Another one I focused on was Toothless from ‘How to Train Your Dragon’. While both of these characters won’t physically link to my character, it’s their personality and characteristics that will become clear when I develop further. Due to my limited experience I had always planned on creating a 2d animated character, so I looked at the Disney short film, ‘Day & Night’ as it is very effective while the characters have very simplistic lines. As my inspiration for my design, I wanted to include research on Dug from ‘Up’ as not only does he have physical features which are alike, I plan to include but also how he is so easily distracted will be similar to my own character.

I began with using the basic shapes to construct different structures and silhouettes for the character. This allowed me to see which composition would suit the personality and activities and how it would move on the screen. When looking over the different shapes, I focused on the first two sketches I made and developed them further. However, when I added features to the face, I found that the combination of the two round shapes wouldn’t work with the type of character I wanted to create. So, following a number of further sketches I came to my final character design.