Overview
For week 5 of my animation studio side to the course, we were told to begin creating the characters we will be using for the animation jam the groups will be making. For my group, we will be making bird characters that will fit into a bird spy world we have developed. Each of us chose one bird breed we would be designing so that it would be easier to break down all of the characters we would be creating, for my bird breed I chose to do the design for a Robin character.
When I did the first sketch for the character, I gave the Robin some small accessories to somewhat make the design more appealing to the viewer as I believed the Robin on its own would be too boring as a design, due to the design being so simple compared to other designs people in the group have made. On the first design variant of the Robin, I gave it a pair of goggles as well as a scarf around its neck and a metal tracker around its leg to act as its spy tracker. For the second design I moved the goggles down to over the eyes and added headphones to the top of the head and a badge on the chest instead of the scarf which would have the letters “R.B.F” on it which stands for the organisation name “Royal Bird Force”. On the third design I then swapped the headphones for an RAF beret and kept the goggles on the eyes, I then removed the badge and swapped the metal tracker for a ribbon on the leg to act as the tracker instead. For the fourth design however as opposed to thinking of brand-new accessories to add I instead combined the previous 3 designs into one design, taking elements like the goggles on the head and scarf from the first design, then combining that with the beret and ribbon from the third design and the badge from the second design to create a much more interesting design.
After getting the fourth design I then tried a few more alterations to the design. For design #5 I swapped the goggles and beret for a hard based pilot’s hat instead with a bandana instead of the scarf and badge combo from the previous design. In my opinion the fifth design looked too much like a post office worker and so I returned to design #4 and for #6 I added a pair of white feathers tied to the beret and I decided to take the bandana from design 5 and see if it looked better with the beret and badge, however it did not so I once again returned to design #4. This time I decided I would keep the white feathers for the design however as I wasn’t entirely sold on the location they are in, on design #6 I then moved them to hang around the neck underneath the scarf, attaching them to string necklace instead of tying them to the scarf. Design #7 then became the design which I was most happy with however I wanted to ensure that I had elements which would link the Robin to the spirituality which is connected to these birds and so while the feathers could link to the spirit world and act as one of those tell-tale symbols, it didn’t feel like enough, so I had to start coming up with different symbols I could use to link the design to the spirit world.
After deciding that I wanted to add more clues into the design to hint at the spirituality linked with Robins, I began researching different visual symbols that people could recognise as being also linked to the spirit world in some way. For design #8 I tried adding a cartoon ghost marking onto the chest of the Robin which would be covered partially by the scarf however I felt this made that area of the robin feel TOO cluttered and so I decided not to use this one. During the support class on Week 6 a psychic medium who goes by the name of Tony Hindley, went live on Facebook to do a few readings for people. I follow this medium on Facebook and so when he went live, I joined the stream and began asking him if he had any symbols he would say represented the spirit world. During the stream Tony mentioned a pentagram, owls, halos and white feathers being symbols he would suggest, I also explained that I was trying to design a robin for my project and when I mentioned this, he also suggested the use of Angel numbers (a series of repeating numbers such as 111, 222, 333, etc.) That got me thinking and for Design #9 I experimented with having the white feathers from design 7 and from the list Tony gave me I chose to add in the angel number “999” onto the ribbon around the leg of the robin.
There were a couple of reasons behind the choice of angel number I added. The first reason behind adding this specific angel number to the design was due to the message this number represents, which is to “believe in your own self-worth”. The second reason I had to adding this specific number was actually a personal one; that reason being it is an angel number which I myself and my mum have both had sent to us before in times in which we needed to hear this particular message.
After deciding on the design elements, I wanted for my robin it was time to move onto finding a colour palette I wanted to use for him.
For palette #1 tried a mid-tone brown with a mid-tone orange for the chest and a fairly dark but desaturated blue for the scarf/beret/ribbon with a fairly dark, saturated brown for the legs goggle edges and beak. On palette #2 I darkened the browns and orange and saturated the blue however in my opinion this palette made the robin look TOO dark and didn’t fit the idea I had for robin character. Therefore, in palette #3 I lightened the colour tones of palette #1 which I actually liked quite a lot as I felt this palette fitted the idea I had for the robin quite well. Despite this fact I tried to come up with palette #4, this time giving the entire design a much more reddish hue with almost bright red for the chest of the robin and reddish brown for the main feather colour; on this palette I also decided to saturate the blue of the scarf 100% to contrast the heavy red hue of bird. Curiosity got the better of me and for palette #5 I desaturated the red tinted design to give the chest of the robin a peachier looking colour and the red tint in the brown caused the robin to have a pinker/purplish look to it and to compliment this new palette I gave the scarf/beret/ribbon a lighter turquoise colour as opposed to the darker blue it had in the previous palettes.
After coming up with the 5 potential colour palettes I could use for the robin it came the time to actually choose which palette I would be using for the final design. When it came to narrowing down which design(s) I believed fit my idea of the robin character the best I managed to narrow the choice down to between palettes #3 and #5. In my opinion these lighter designs conveyed the younger more innocent feel I wanted the robin character to have and so the challenge became deciding between both of these designs.
To decide on which palette to use I turned to ask my mum for her opinion on which palette she preferred, and she chose the palette from #3 as her favourite one. With that I took the two palettes to the discord server for our group in order to see which one they preferred between the two and they agreed that palette #3 was the better palette and with that I had a fully finished design for the robin in our world of Bird Spies!
