Character Designs
30 second Animation Concept - 'Alienated'
For this project I came up with an idea for a 30 second animation, and completed the research and pre-production for it.
Plot:
It is a family friendly short about a lonely alien named Ogggie. He is the only inhabitant on a planet, and one day receives a package with blueprints in the mail from an anonymous person. He follows the instructions which builds a little spaceship, and he follows it to another planet, where he meets another lonely little alien. It shows that she could see him from her planet and she decided to design the ship for him so that they could meet each other.
I decided to base my alien design on an owl, as this suited my characters intelligent nature and my research showed kids related more to animal-based character designs.
Here are some design iterations showing how I tried different body shapes and proportions. I tested different outfits to suit his inventor status.
For his house, I liked the concept of him finding an abandoned space craft and turning it into a more homely space for himself.
I used real photos of space shuttles to inspire my design, and simplified the structure to be more kid-friendly.
My Final character design -
Oggie wears an old, oversized lab coat which he found on the abandoned space craft. His colour palette of greys and blues reflect his loneliness and the browns to stay true to his owl form.
My Final Environment design -
I took inspiration from Pixar's Wall-e, and added homely touches to the space craft that I felt Oggie would have made to feel more at home there.
Concept art from the animated short -
It depicts Oggie at work putting together the space ship he has been sent.
'Kit' - Final Project Short Film
For my Final Project, I am working with one of my peers to produce a short film that we hope will inspire environmental awareness and action from an audience of all ages and cultures.
It follows a boy on a walk through a forest, initially uninterested in the world around him, until he stumbles upon a baby fox, igniting his appreciation for nature.
I started with looking at different silhouettes, and how different shapes can be used to reflect different personalities. I then worked on putting more expression and personality into the designs and came up with some initial sketches.
Since the character is coming home from school, I worked to design a generic school uniform that was not too specific to the UK, and could be universally recognised for our broad target audience.
For the final design, I decided on a yellow shirt to compliment the green forest environment that the story takes place in.
I also made sure to add touches such as scruffy hair, an uneven collar and socks, as well as some dirt on his elbows and knees to coincide with context of him returning from a day at school. I think these additions work well to bring the character to life and help visually suggest his personality.
I completed all of these illustrations using Photoshop, and referred to them throughout modelling the character in Maya.
I then moved on to designing the fox. It was important to ensure that it looked as though it belonged to the same world as Kit. My initial sketches were too realistic, so I worked on designing a more stylised version.
For the final designs, I exaggerated the proportions even further to achieve a look that resembled the same style I used for the boy character.
Since my group and I decided that we would not have time to groom the model, I designed the fox with smooth surfaces and large clumps of hair to give the illusion of fur with hard modelling.
Dennis the Menace Re-design
For this project, I took the children's character Dennis the Menace and redesigned him for an older teen audience in the 80s.
I studied punk culture from this era to make my design contextually accurate, and drew inspiration from Sid Vicious and other punk icons for his character design.
I took style references from Jake Parker and Agnes Cecile while staying true to the original Dennis the Menace comic book illustrations to achieve my final result.
Here are some examples of the iterations I went through for the face design and outfit choices before choosing the most successful.
Final character design sheet
A taster design of what an image in the new version of the comic would look like.