Our first class in assignment 2 involved us discussing creating a 3D character model based of some cartoon show styles. There were multiple options available to choose from, but I ended up going with SpongeBob SquarePants as it was my favorite out of the choices given to us. We spent the rest of the class researching and looking into the styles of our chosen shows.
https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/SpongeBob_SquarePants_(character)/gallery
I had also used this website to research the show’s creator more, and I had also found some very early sketches of the SpongeBob characters done by him.
https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/Stephen_Hillenburg
I used this website to first study the overall style and look of how the show designs it’s characters. I found out that the show’s art style was created by Stephen Hillenburg, who was a marine biology educator that was also an artist that usually drew very expressive depictions of sea life, which of course links back to the theme of SpongeBob. Throughout the duration of the show’s existence, the art style had developed and changed as the show was airing, as seen with the example image.
I wanted to research further into why SpongeBob’s animation changed every so often, and I found this video that explains it quite well. SpongeBob occasionally changed animation styles to things such as it’s season 1 style, and a full 3D animated episode. They did this to convey the story of the episode, using the change of animation to best suit the atmosphere and plot of the episode.
After looking into the history and development into the designs of the characters, I decided I wanted to use the standard fish character as a basis of the character I want to model.
Of course, the final look and design wasn’t decided on instantly as I had gone through multiple concept designs for my character.
I wanted to turn the general fish character into a type of mafia boss character, one with exaggerated proportions such as long, sharp padded shoulders, having a cigar in his mouth and carrying a briefcase to emphasis on his serious demeaner. I also used some characters as a reference to this genre of character type.
Spy – Team Fortress 2
Tony Soprano — The Sopranos
Fat Tony — The Simpsons
Kingpin — Spiderman