This week is 8 weeks, already so far into the course! This was another very fun week as it has been the start of our character design process, which is one of my favorite aspects of animation.

CLASSWORK:

This week, our lecturer introduced us to character blocking, a concept I’m quite new with but am excited to start practicing and taking a look at. To keep it simple, character blocking is a method that uses primitive geometry to bock out the main parts of a character’s silhouette. From then on, all you do is sculpt meshes that you use and turn them into the correct shapes and sizes. I did find that I struggled in some areas of this but honestly, it was very helpful to me.

I took a go at using the drawing tablets for the sculpting, which made the process much easier resulting in me being able to create a recognizable character, with some improvements needed. I found that using the tablet felt just like drawing rather than sculpting, which I think made the process a lot of fun!

HOMEWORK:

This week, I made a start on my character, starting off with a few sketches. I’ve decided that my character is going to belong in the Hotel Transylvania Universe, but not exactly sure where or what purpose they will have just yet.

I wanted to incorporate the idea of there being monsters and creatures into my character, so I have came up with a few that resemble that concept.

I’m very intrigued and generally interested in sea creatures, so I want to somehow incorporate that into my character, starting off with this design that I created. I like how the hotel has zombie waiters and the outfits they have, and so my first design is a waiter, but a fish.

It seems a bit silly at a glance, but I believe this resembles Genndy’s ideas and concepts. In order for it to really resemble Hotel Transylvania, I’ve also decided that I’m going to use quite a bright and varied color tone throughout the design process.

Speaking of keeping the colors bright and varied, I have come up with 3 more design concepts of different sea creatures, the squid being my favorite out of all of them.

I decided to go further with the squid concept as out of all of my designs, I personally think it’s the most impressive and detailed one out of them all. I like how the tentacles appear off of the bottom half of his face almost like a beard, and how I can create expression through them. The purple, green and blue color concepts further resemble how he’s from the deeper part of the sea, but still resembling Tartakovsky’s.

I decided to give the squid a half-human half-squid body, but giving him a very tall height, long limbs and in general a very thin lanky look about him. I settled for the limb length and the height after i was inspired by the Frankenstein characters and even giving him broad shoulders just like Dracula’s. Furthermore, I envision him as a very smartly dressed business man, who comes to the hotel every year on his annual vacation, emphasizing the pinstripe suit he wears and the briefcase.

 

Overall, I went for the green color scheme as I think it works best for both what I have envisioned and Tartakovsky’s style, universe and concept style.