Before beginning to try and design my own character I decided to take some of Genndy’s own characters and do some sketches of them, taking notes on their form and shapes used and how it blended. I also tried to look at what gave him such a distinct style which I thought was important to try and integrate in my own design. For his characters I choose Samurai Jack and Dexter. I looked at how Jacks design used both straight and curved lines in contrast to give a strong feeling of energy within his poses. H e also has a very angular design which helps convey his stoic characterisation. After doing this I found the main things to think about during designing my own character was to keep it simplistic and also quite shape oriented. I found this was one of the main reasons for his strong and recognisable characters which could be easily identified by their silohetes. To start I began just trying to get out as many ideas at possible. For this stage I wasn’t overly focused on trying to have every character look like the final design in the style, instead I just tried to generate ideas. After I did this I choose my two favourite designs which was the devil dude on the floating skeleton. Because I had finalised my choices to these two I started to go into more depth with their designs thinking about how their eyes would move and how their faces could be contorted to fit and show different emotions. Once this was complete I decided to choose the skeleton reaper guy. I felt that I was able to closely catch Genndy’s style with this character while also keeping it quite minimal in design. I also like the expressiveness I was able to achieve with the character in such a simplistic design.
