We were to design a character in the art style of Genndy Tartakovsky who made works such as hotel Transylvania and samurai jack. he studied at California arts and right after worked at Hanna-Barbera. his style is cartoonish, and he embraces breaking character models to exaggerate character movements an give a very fluid movement. he makes minimalist designs with a strong emphasis on the silhouettes of the characters and clear shapes. I decided to create a character that could be from the hotel Transylvania series.
hotel Transylvania has a very Exaggerated, cartoonish, and highly stylized, style that serves to emphasize the physical comedy. Characters are often stretched, squished, and posed to create humor and slapstick. this means that the characters need to be simple and easy to pose and stretch, they need to have a very silhouette like structure so that even when they are contorting into different funny poses, you can still tell what character they are. this is because Genndy Tartakovsky’s animation style has its roots in 2D, influences the characters’ exaggerated movements and expressive designs.
The character designs are simplified as to lean into the physical comedy of the films rather than intricate and serious
a film/series which is somewhat similar with 3d animated monsters it the Monster high series. its most recent rendition has went into 3D and despite both being animated monsters, they have drastically different styles and therefore tones. the monster high characters have a fashionable yet gothic style with long slender figures with stylised proportions. they have doll like figures like large eyes and exaggerated eyelashes. yet despite the vast array of characters they have, majority tend to have the same body type, just different colours and accessory’s
hotel Transylvania differentiates by having a exaggerated and bouncy design that focuses on the silhouette. its also a more simplistic design. this creates a different tone as it shows how hotel Transylvania focuses on the laughs rather than a gothic mood and doll sales. hotel Transylvania also has shapy look to it, all its characters can early be broken up into the shapes that made them, which helps create distinct silhouette.
thus i went through many different designs, most on paper, i varied between two main designs, one of a ragdoll character and an massive anglerfish monster. the designs were heavily influenced from Genndy Tartakovsky with simplistic yet fluid designs that can facilitate cartoonish movements.
I made a rag/voodoo doll which I named Penny. The idea behind her is that she is a small poorly made doll who was strapped together with left over pieces and string arms.
i took the knowledge on monster high vs hotel Transylvania as i made sure my design is simplistic with emphasis on the silhouette and is cartoony that i could imagine being squished and stretched. its vibrant with details yet nothing too much that would distract. i made sure my character is made of obvious shapes, being primarily triangles
i have included a timelapse of the digital drawing of penny. We are also to design a object or item for our characters, so I designed penny a weapon of a syringe. the syringe appears large as penny herself is designed to be rather small.