During the first blackboard call, before people were being swapped about, my group were figuring out a solid story for the world and Leticia sent it to the group. This is what was sent word for word:

“The story is about animal hybrids who have been experimented on by scientists. They are being experimented on because they all live in a wasteland and the only land that’s still rich and prosperous is the ‘utopia’ however only the animals can survive in the utopia and humans die for mysterious reasons after entering. The humans want to work out what about the animal makes it so they can all survive. However some scientists go too far and one deranged scientist is making an army of animal hybrids not for survival but for his own scheme who is also infusing them with technology. This story takes place after several failed attempts to escape by the animals from their lab prison. However one animal decides they have the perfect plan to escape and tries to convince the beaten down animals to try once more. Other scientists have realised what the deranged scientist is up to and are trying to get rid of him, some have even mysteriously went missing in the process. The story ends with the animals freeing themselves from the prison with this final plan, also taking with them a few humans who proved to not be evil as they all thought and giving them a chance to live. The other scientists left are controlled by the evil scientist and give into his schemes. The twist is that the animals must be the ones to grant humans access to the utopia and then they will not die when entering so the humans and animals who escaped enter it.”

Once we were finishing up the story idea, people from the different groups started getting moved about again. Leticia and Samantha were placed into a different group and EJ Kerr and Neave Thompson took their place. After showing them what the story is gonna be like and explaining the world to them, we started talking about the number of main and secondary characters there will be. We agreed to have 5 animal hybrids, 3 good scientists with other scientists in the background when necessary, and 1 main antagonist. We also discussed that the scientists who have “mysteriously went missing” could be some of what the deranged scientist is experimenting on by creating freakish human/animal hybrids so we will be designing some of them too.

Once we got the characters sorted out within my group we all took a break for lunch and then the second blackboard call started where our blogs which we have been working on for the past few weeks were being critiqued by Alec, Aodhan or Sarah. We were divided into 3 big groups and Aodhan was critiquing the blogs from my group and when he got to mine he mentioned about adding shading to my characters in the future to give them more depth, which is something I will try to implement. More general advice he gave to everyone was using a grey background instead of white to properly see the colours in the designs.

In preparation for Week 5 of “Character” we were shown how to create concept art for characters in a professional setting and were assigned a few homework tasks to complete for next week.

Exercise 1: Designing Character Concept Art For Our World And Drawing Them With Different Poses/Facial Expressions

Before the lecture was uploaded, I had already designed my scientist/animal hybrids so they were not created using the methods the lecture showed and instead opted to redo my panda/axolotl hybrid design using the lecture methods which I’ll get to later. For now, I’ll show my scientist/animal hybrids which are shown below:

I’m fairly pleased with how the human/snake hybrid turned out since I believe it is an intriguing design and the human skin tone matches the colours of the snake quite nicely so that the human areas end up looking out of place because it’s a human/animal hybrid and not animal/animal hybrid yet still makes the design overall look relatively cohesive. The same cannot be said about the human/giraffe hybrid since I personally find it atrocious and the skin tone clashes horribly with the colours of the giraffe. I am also fairly displeased with the body shape of the giraffe since it just doesn’t look right and the amount of giraffe spots I included would be a real pain to animate since it was not fun doing so many of them. Overall the human/giraffe hybrid looks, to be blunt, a real disastrous mess, and if I was to redo the design I would give way less spots and have the body a similar width to the neck and have them connect.

I had also taken into consideration Aodhan’s advice about using shading for the characters so I used a dark purple for the shading and lowered the opacity of the eraser to 50% before erasing the dark purple to create the shading. This is shown below:

For my first proper attempts at shading I would say they didn’t turn out half bad. Once again the human/snake hybrid is a lot better than the human/giraffe one personally because I think I messed up the shading for under the giraffe nose and it turns an already pretty ugly design even uglier. This is in stark contrast to the human/snake hybrid in which the shading looks particularly effective. If I had more experience with shading I would also redo the shading for the human/giraffe hybrid to make it look better.

For my Pandalotl design redo, we were taught to draw many different variations on how the character is drawn and only keep the characteristics that makes them unique (in my case the axolotl gills and tail and panda ears) while drawing everything else differently. Mine is shown below:

I had drawn 4 unique head and body shapes for the top row, and for the other designs I had chosen 2 out of the 4 body designs I liked and combined them with the heads of the rest in the top row. This is shown below:

The top row designs have all been coloured in for me to properly reference them with the heads and bodies in the middle and bottom rows, and I had coloured in the head/body combination I liked the most in the standard colours of the top row. I personally thought the body of 3 and the head of 4 made an excellent combination, and with the shape of the character sorted out I played about with colouring different areas of the head and body in the dark pink of the gills and put these 2 variations in the last 2 empty squares in the bottom row.

I ended up going with the “3,4 C” one in the bottom right for the colours of each area and this design was the one I would use for the reposing and facial expressions which is shown below:

It was interesting trying to figure out how the head is shown at different angles and quite challenging with regards to the head in a sideways view because I wasn’t sure how to draw the axolotl gills in that position, but I love the 3 drawings and I think they all turned out pretty well. I had also added shading to each one which is shown below:

Once again it was quite challenging trying to figure out the shading of the axolotl gills in the sideways view and I don’t think I quite nailed it but at the same time I don’t feel as though I’m too far off.

Exercise 2: Give Descriptions To Your Designs Using The Character Design Profile Template

BASIC STATISTICS

Name: Andy

Alias: “Cobraman” (by evil scientist)

Age: 5 (dog years), equivalent 36 (human years)

Height: 170 cm (5.6 feet)

Weight: 64 kg (140 pounds)

Sex: Male

Race: Snake (Cobra)/Human hybrid

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: NA

Glasses or Contact Lenses: None

Nationality: Wastelandian

Skin Color: Gold, Cream, Pink

Shape of Face: Circular (human), oval (snake)

Distinguishing Features: Cobra hood, tail (acts as a leg), scales and head (only mouth functional), Human face (without mouth), arms and one leg

Clothes: How does he/she dress? NA

Mannerisms: Never one to snoop in other people’s business intentionally, if people want to talk he would let them come to him instead of him forcing them to speak. As a hybrid with a snake he would extend the “s” syllable when speaking

Habits: Just doing his job, doesn’t focus on the world around him much so he has ended up bumping into a few scientists quite literally from time to time

Health: Physically fine, but not mentally due to being experimented on by the evil scientist. This was not what he signed up for he’s just a cleaner

Hobbies: Likes to relax after a long day of cleaning and enjoys a good nap

Favorite Sayings: “Sorry, didn’t see you there” when he accidentally bumps into a scientist

Sound of Voice: Calm, relaxed

Walking Style: Casually strolling along, goes with the flow

Disabilities: None

Character’s Greatest Flaw: Unobservant to his surroundings to a fault, can result in him being in the wrong place at the wrong time like when he found out what the villain is up to

Character’s Best Quality: Is very patient and gets along well with others whenever he interacts with them

SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hometown: The Wasteland

Current Residence: The Lab (located in the Wasteland area)

Occupation: Cleaner (former), Test subject (current)

Income: NA

Talents/Skills: Is a very effective cleaner and is good at getting rid of the other scientists’ messes

ATTRIBUTES AND ATTITUDES

Educational Background: The Lab

Intelligence Level: Average intelligence

Character’s Goals in Life: Help make other people’s lives that much easier by cleaning up after the scientists, has no real life goals apart from that

How does character see himself/herself? He sees himself as being quite straightforward and easy to please and treats the scientists like family

How confident is the character? Very confident in his cleaning abilities as that is his area of comfort and is used to it

Does the character seem ruled by emotion? Not particularly, tends to go with the flow a lot and doesn’t let things bring him down often

EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Introvert or Extrovert: Introvert

How does the character deal with:

• Sadness? Will allow himself to cry when he’s alone in his room after he finishes cleaning as he doesn’t want his sadness distracting him while on the job
• Anger? It is a rare sight to see him angry, and even then the anger doesn’t typically last long except in extreme circumstances. Would try not to let his anger show for the most part, although when it builds up it’s hard to keep it in
• Conflict? He’s just a cleaner, he doesn’t wanna get involved in the scientists’ conflicts since they’re nothing to do with him so he retreats from the situation to clean somewhere else and comes back later to clean that area when the scientists are no longer there
• Change? Adapts well to change as he easily goes with the flow
• Loss? Will allow himself adequate time to grieve but makes sure it doesn’t get in the way of his work too much

What would the character like to change about his/her life? With hindsight he wishes that he didn’t come across the villain when the cleaning during that particular time as if he had come there later chances are he wouldn’t have become an abomination

What motivates the character? Being a friendly and approachable cleaner

What frightens the character? Being alone too much without having anything useful to do, was especially bad when he was the first abomination held captive by the villain as the only person he would come into contact with was the villain himself which wasn’t pleasant

What makes this character happy? Bumping into the scientists and asking them about their day, it’s the little things that can improve someone’s mood and he hopes to keep the scientists in as good a mood as possible

Relationship skills: Quite friendly and approachable to the scientists and is dearly missed when he mysteriously disappears

CHARACTER’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE STORY

What is the character’s archetype? The Everyman, he is very supportive of the scientists even if he doesn’t understand the science terms and suports them in the way he knows how by cleaning up after a hard day’s work and is also very down to earth and approachable

How is the character affected by his or her environment? The lab environment in general he would be happy and content in as he enjoys keeping things clean for the scientists, but after being held captive by the evil scientist he realises the lab isn’t as good as he thought it was

TIMELINE

Time period: Future-Earth

Describe five important background events that led up to the character’s storyline.

• Prior to being a hybrid Andy was the one normally cleaning up after the other scientists and happened to overhear the villain talking to himself when he returned to a room to clean up and thought it wasn’t his business so he left to clean a different area
• Unbeknownst to him the villain happened to see him turn a corner and assumed he had heard his plan and so needed to stop him before he told the others
• Since Andy never paid attention to what the villain was saying he assumed that the villain was talking to himself about what he wanted to say to Andy as he got called into his office soon after and thought nothing of it until he realised he was about to be experimented on to keep him quiet
• Andy was very infuriated once he became a hybrid as he was very clearly the test dummy in the sense that the combined traits weren’t fully cohesive such as his face and eyes being on the cobra hood but he would speak through the cobra head and as a result he would be very horrifying to look at
• Over a period of time his anger built up until one day he snapped and tried biting the villain to kill him so he could escape, but unfortunately the venom is weaker due to not being fully cobra so it didn’t affect the villain and he was unable to escape

 

BASIC STATISTICS

Name: Sophie

Alias: “Giraffeman” (by evil scientist)

Age: 4 (dog years), equivalent 32 (human years)

Height: 176 cm (5.8 feet)

Weight: 70 kg (155 pounds)

Sex: Female

Race: Giraffe/Human hybrid

Eye Color: Green

Hair Color: NA

Glasses or Contact Lenses: None

Nationality: Wastelandian

Skin Color: Brown, Cream, Pink

Shape of Face: Circular, more oval at the top

Distinguishing Features: Giraffe hooves, spots, nose and horns, Human ears and legs

Clothes: How does he/she dress? NA

Mannerisms: Not afraid to tell other scientists what they are doing wrong

Habits: Has a tendency to cut people off when speaking

Health: Physically fine, but not mentally due to being experimented on by the evil scientist

Hobbies: Used to enjoy reading quiz books during her breaks, but now she can’t due to the evil scientist holding her and others captive

Favorite Sayings: “The only thing worse than an idiot is an insane idiot!” to the evil scientist when he tries to recruit her for his other experiments

Sound of Voice: Loud, confident

Walking Style: Confident, head held high (quite literally)

Disabilities: None

Character’s Greatest Flaw: Has too much pride, thought she could handle the evil scientist on her own by yelling at him and making him a known enemy instead of initially agreeing to his plan and alerting the other scientists when he dismissed her

Character’s Best Quality: Her high intelligence

SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hometown: The Wasteland

Current Residence: The Lab (located in the Wasteland area)

Occupation: Scientist (former), Test subject (current)

Income: NA

Talents/Skills: Is very efficient at getting things done and is very responsible and organised with her work

ATTRIBUTES AND ATTITUDES

Educational Background: The Lab

Intelligence Level: Highly intelligent

Character’s Goals in Life: To complete her day to day goals and help the other scientists finally discover how the animals can survive in the Utopia (preferably she would be the one in the team who discovers it)

How does character see himself/herself? She sees herself as being confident in her abilities and trusts her judgement and quick thinking to get things done efficiently, essentially like a boss figure as she enjoys telling others what to do

How confident is the character? Very confident, she thrives on the praise of others and strives to prove herself to the other scientists that she is worthy of their attention and time

Does the character seem ruled by emotion? Not particularly, only very extreme events can cause her to lash out, such as learning about what the evil scientist was planning on recruiting her for

EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Introvert or Extrovert: Extrovert

How does the character deal with:

• Sadness? Doesn’t have time for sadness, only has time for work so she ignores the feeling until it goes away
• Anger? Slowly builds up before it gets released, doesn’t get angry often but when she does it is not a pretty sight
• Conflict? Believes that conflict disrupts the workflow and is often annoyed at her work being interrupted because of it but doesn’t really care about the conflict itself
• Change? Change is a natural part of science so she enjoys seeing the results of things changing from the different experiments and with each change comes a step closer to the scientists’ goal of being able to survive in the Utopia
• Loss? Allows herself a little time to grieve what is lost before going back to the hardworking intelligent scientist she normally is

What would the character like to change about his/her life? Now that she’s held captive by the evil scientist, she ends up having a lot of time to herself and after some self reflection she realises she shouldn’t have put all her focus into work and grieves the relationships with the other scientists she never got to fully experience and never will, and now feels like she has lost all meaning in her life

What motivates the character? Being the best scientist she can be

What frightens the character? The evil scientist after seeing what he has done to herself and others, and belatedly realising all her life has revolved around science and now that she is unable to continue science, she no longer has a purpose in life. She also has a massive wake up call as now that she herself is a scientific abomination, she knows how the hybrid test subjects she frequently experimented on feel and feels ashamed for what she has done and that it only took her up to this point to realise that what she was doing was wrong

What makes this character happy? Doing quiz books during her breaks to keep her intelligence in check, and using science for the greater good (or so she thought)

Relationship skills: Never had any time for friendships between herself and the other scientists since she was always so wrapped up in her work to spend proper time with them, something which she regrets now that she is unable to see them again

CHARACTER’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE STORY

What is the character’s archetype? The Creator, she is very imaginative and driven to fulfill her goals and uses science to accomplish her goals

How is the character affected by his or her environment? The lab environment in general she would normally thrive in as she loves science and loved doing experiments, but after being held captive by the evil scientist she realises just how awful an environment the lab can really be and is able to see things from the perspective of the hybrid animals she previously experimented on

TIMELINE

Time period: Future-Earth

Describe five important background events that led up to the character’s storyline.

• Prior to being a hybrid Sophie was a top level scientist, and someone the villain initially attempted to recruit for his ahem “extracurricular activities”
• When she went to his office for a discussion he wanted to have with her she was horrified and angered when Andy, now half snake, was revealed to her and refused to cooperate with the activities after calling the villain an “insane idiot”
• After fleeing the office she tried making an announcement to a few other scientists who were sceptical to her claims and didn’t believe her since they thought she was working too much and needed a break, fortunately this made the villain turn a blind eye to them as they didn’t believe Sophie
• The other 3 good scientists notice her disappearance fairly quickly as Sophie would never willingly not show up to work on her experiments and realise something is definitely wrong before remembering what Sophie tried to warn them about and realised in horror that she was right and that going against the villain’s schemes was what made her disappear
• Potential catalyst for the scientists wanting change since something needed to be done about the villain, but fear held them back as they know something happened to Sophie for speaking out as well as possibly Andy who had also disappeared. This is when the lab prison escape excuse comes into play which they conveniently forget to voice their suspicions about to the villain

 

BASIC STATISTICS

Name: Echo

Alias: “Pandalotl” (by scientists)

Age: 1.5 (dog years), equivalent 19 (human years)

Height: 70 cm (2.3 feet)

Weight: 75 kg (170 pounds)

Sex: Female

Race: Panda/Axolotl hybrid

Eye Color: Blue

Nationality: Utopian

Skin Color: Pink, White, Black

Shape of Face: Circular

Distinguishing Features: Panda ears, Axolotl gills and tail

Mannerisms: Often communicates through head “yes/no” movements

Habits: Taps her index fingers when anxious/overwhelmed

Health: Physically fine, but not mentally due to being in the lab

Hobbies: Dreaming of a better life outside the lab where she isn’t experimented on

Favorite Sayings: “hm” (nodding head), “mm-nn” (shaking head)

Sound of Voice: Fairly quiet, only speaks when necessary

Walking Style: Unsure and awkward, not very confident. Walks with arms raised slightly in front of her

Disabilities: Autism

Character’s Greatest Flaw: Overwhelmed by sound easily especially loud noise which happens often on a weekly basis so she definitely has it out for the lab and the scientists for putting her through this constantly, she will hold a grudge and won’t forget it easily for a long time. Also can be very stubborn and will more often than not keep her feelings bottled up as opposed to sharing them and as a result her emotions can get the best of her sometimes

Character’s Best Quality: While being quite introverted she is generally quite caring and sweet towards the other inmates so she ends up being fairly well liked, even if she is unaware of it most of the time. She also likes to be responsible and tries to think things through before jumping into action, even if sometimes her emotions cloud her judgement

SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hometown: The Utopia

Current Residence: The Lab (located in the Wasteland area)

Occupation: Test subject

Talents/Skills: Gills allow her to breathe underwater although it won’t be shown most likely, and is good at distraction by being cute and once tried to escape the lab by persuading the scientist to let her out (it didn’t work). Is very quiet so she can sneak up behind others without them noticing and scaring them without meaning to

ATTRIBUTES AND ATTITUDES

Intelligence Level: Fairly intelligent

Character’s Goals in Life: To escape the lab and go back to the Utopia

How does character see himself/herself? She sees herself as being quiet and creative and can observe the situation around her, sometimes spotting things others might initially brush off as unimportant

How confident is the character? Not very confident, she is in a very unfamiliar place which takes a lot of getting used to and so she is not very confident in her navigation

Does the character seem ruled by emotion? Sometimes her emotions can get the better of her and she lashes out, but regrets her outbursts as she doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings

EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Introvert or Extrovert: Introvert

How does the character deal with:

• Sadness? Bottles it up, doesn’t want other inmates worrying about her since they have their own problems to deal with and she doesn’t want to be a burden to them
• Anger? Tries not to let her anger show but sometimes she can lash out in anger without thinking
• Conflict? Does not like conflict whatsoever and tries to avoid it, oftentimes falling into the role of peacemaker to try and keep things civil
• Change? Does not cope well with change. Being in the lab is such a major change in routine to her and craves the normalcy of being out in the Utopia again and is never fully relaxed in the lab
• Loss? Tries not to dwell too much on it as it will make her sad, and she doesn’t want to show sadness or any other perceived weakness in front of others

What would the character like to change about his/her life? Wants to be free from the lab and go back to the Utopia

What motivates the character? Trying to escape the lab to make her dream of being back in the Utopia a reality

What frightens the character? The scientists, she has a hard time trusting the good scientists when they tag along with the other hybrids because of the history of the experiments the scientists have done to her and the others

What makes this character happy? Having sufficient time alone but at the same time not being completely alone all the time as she also likes spending time with the small group of inmates planning to escape as she feels closer to them. Also having memories of the Utopia

Relationship skills: Not very good at socialising as she is very sensitive and anxious and very awkward around most inmates, but those she does end up socialising with she feels really close to and more comfortable with and considers them her friends

CHARACTER’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE STORY

What is the character’s archetype? The Caregiver, she cares a lot about those she is closest to and looks out for their wellbeing

How is the character affected by his or her environment? The environment takes a huge mental toll on her because not only is it unfamiliar compared to the Utopia, it’s more overwhelming to her due to how loud and oftentimes suffocating the lab can make her feel

TIMELINE

Time period: Future-Earth

Describe five important background events that led up to the character’s storyline.

• A panda and an axolotl are taken from the Utopia by the scientists and combined to form the hybrid “Pandalotl”
• “Pandalotl” is kept in her own cell like the other inmates and is very confused and frightened and doesn’t understand what is happening or why she is here in the lab
• After one too many experiments from the scientists she feels extremely panicked and overwhelmed and desperate to escape
• After several individual failed escape attempts she starts to lose hope about ever escaping, but then she meets 4 other inmates and one of them reveals he has a plan for them to escape
• Rejuvinated by this hope, they start discussing the plan to escape and she gets to know the other 4 better and comes to care for her new friends

References Of The Week

For my human/snake hybrid I used a cobra as the snake reference for the overall body shape and after seeing the reference I had the idea of making the human face and eyes appear in the cobra hood since the darker parts in the reference look a bit like eyes.

For my human/giraffe hybrid I used a giraffe as the giraffe reference for the neck and head as well as the spots.

For my Pandalotl redo, I referenced the same panda and axolotl images I had used last time but when I was messing about with the colour palette and was about to make the eye markings and ears dark pink to match the axolotl gills I remembered about red pandas being a thing and the dark pink areas could possibly be seen as similar to the dark ginger areas in the red panda.