WEEK 5

 

This week we were taught the basics of character design, and how colour, shape, and silhouette among other things work together to create characters. During the lecture I was shown iconic characters and was told how and why they are instantly recognisable and well known. For homework we were asked to think about our character descriptions and fill 2-4 pages of drawings with character design work. I love character design so this was something I was very excited to work on!

 

 

I started with designing a character for my group, which has a case of hybrid animals, I based him off a lion and a rabbit. After I had the character design down, I went onto colour testing and chose the one I liked the most after receiving input from my peers. I chose number 3, although it was really hard to come to a decision because I like all of them. Number 1 was based and took on a more domesticated look, number 2 was based more on the dark and light colours of a lion, and number 3 was a mix of both – so I chose number 3 for the final colours.

 

 

Next I had to do a turnaround so I can conceptualise the character from multiple angles and see how it would look in the world.

 

 

I drew the bunny lion a few more times, to see how it would look interacting with a prop and pulling different expressions. from the art I did I wanted to insert some personality into it.

The Bunnylion is a caricature of the cowardly lion trope, lions are seen as brave and courageous, and rabbits frail and skittish – so I thought it would be a fun idea to make this character fit the archetype of a character loved by many. He is very meek and skittish, but very curious – he fits into the world with the main ensemble of hybrid animals.

The second character design I worked on was a hybrid between a skunk and a goat, they are also a hybrid animal and fit into the story with the rest of them. I went through quite a few passes at things like face shape, ear shape, if it would have horns or not, and whether it would have the pupils of a normal animal or the sideways pupils of goats.

 

 

I had to choose what goat-like attributes to fit onto the body since it was mostly skunk-like, deciding it would be nice to give them hooves, and a more goat shaped face!

 

 

I had to choose a colour pallete for the character, so did some colour swatches and tests, I was stuck between 1 and 2 for quite a while before showing it to a group of my friends and seeing what the majority liked, the majority liked number 2 so i went with that, and in the bottom right corner drew a small diagram showing how the markings would stretch across the body from above.