For this week our group decided to create a few character designs for our vision of how the characters would look. We planned to meet to discuss our designs and choose which one we would bring forward into our animatics so that we all had the same character design to improve continuity within the project. Unfortunately the meeting ended up being cancelled due to Illness so the group was unable to meet before starting our animatics but we will still decide this before we start our final animation. I have included the character designs which I created for the project.

This is the design I created for the main character, Fern. In my initial character sketches, I had originally designed a different school uniform(Link here: https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/jasminesheppard/2021/10/21/week-5-character/) which was brown with a short sleeved shirt. The group didn’t seem too fond of this outfit, instead preferring the baggier jumper uniform which my group member Cloe had designed. We decided to take her design as a reference to work out the outfits and decide which we liked best. This prompted me to try a different style of uniform but keeping the bow as a school necktie as opposed to a regular tie. I really would like to include this element in the final design as I think it aesthetically matches the style of the school which we want to create, as well as it being a good way to include some secondary animation with the tassels of the bow moving. I will explain this to the group when I am presenting my idea. I also took the basic character profile which we had come up with as a group when it came to including elements such as skin tone, eye colour and ethnicity. I also took on board the notes we got from Sorcha Cartoons as well as the research I had done online about character poses to make sure the silhouette was interesting and to keep the pose containing movement. This advice really helped me as before I wouldn’t have thought about making the pose larger to capture movement, and I would have previously had very static poses.

For this character design, we had a basic character profile as a group, but we were were each coming up with our own vision for the character. I tried to really think about making the character look dynamic, with movement in the pose. I used the website Animator Island to help with looking into this and there was a few different references I used too to help me. (Link: https://www.animatorisland.com/perfect-posing-1-listen-to-the-character-and-to-physics/#:~:text=Posing%20a%20character%20is%20the%20core%20of%20a,it%20should%20be%29%20a%20new%20challenge%20every%20time.)

The conductors of orchestras look very similar to wizardry with the way they move the baton and the larger than life movements. This will definitely be a great reference for our animation as it will include a lot of magic and movement.