PR01:Costume Research

Cara wants a kind of medieval theme going on, but not quite as extreme; it needs to be a bit plainer and less fantasy, but needs to avoid looking modern. I've got a few different examples since I don't yet know who exactly i will be designing.

A lot of the clothes seem to be slightly baggier with minimal patterns and the same kind of earthy colors. I don't yet know if I will be colouring the character since Cara hasn't decided on the colours for everyone else yet, but for now I will think about these kinds of tones.

PR02: Silhouette Test

I needed to determine the right shape to fit the personality of my Bounty Hunter, which lead me to testing out silhouettes. I wanted to keep the sharper angles because of the aesthetic style that I am working in, but for all intents and purposes I want to think of the shapes and nothing more right now.

A few of the shapes immediately give you an idea of what the character could be like - the first seems either extremely stupid or reliable, and does not go down easily. The second looks creepy and possibly older, and not athletically gifted. The bottom left looks fairly athletic, and could be a bully or a hero type character. The third on the bottom row probably has a height complex, and would probably be quite loud and annoying, I think. A bit of a complex would work for me character, but I don't want him to seem quite as ridiculous. The last shape seems to work the best for this personality type, which is what I am moving forwards with.

I tested a few more variations while comparing agains a silhouette similar to my female character's. It isn't quite the same, but I find it important to make sure that they two characters contrast nicely against each other, since they are together throughout most of the story. When a closer height to the female, he looks a little less stupid, so I think that the bottom right character gives me better contrast and makes him still simple capable yet stupid enough.

Silhouette Research

I decided that I needed to do some silhouette research before I could fully figure out how my Bounty Hunter character should look. It was interesting to have a look at the kinds of shapes used per personality, and if any of the characters have a similar personality to my character, I want to see what their silhouettes looks like and why. 

As I've looked at in past year (and in the most simple of terms), rounder shapes often look friendlier and more passive, rectangles can be sturdy and grounded, with triangle characters seemly more 'prickly' and negative, often used as villains. Different combinations of these can make some interesting shapes, as shown above.

Quick observations of above shapes:
Wreck it Ralph; Ralph is less threatening and friendly looking; looks like a bigger version of the guy to the right? Sergeant Calhoun looks very heroic and action orientated. Felix is very plain, as he plays less of a role in the film, but still friendly.

Mummy looks super soft and friendly, wolf man looks very animalism is, tired/done with life? not very well put together. Drac looks determined, prepared, villainous from the angles but also quite regal. Frankenstein is similar to ralph, and non-threatening.

Megamind looks villainous yet silly, making his ascent into heroism much more believable. That one ginger kid looks less top heavy, and so less heroic, compared to heroman.

Baymax is very soft and friendly, extremey non-threatening. Wasabi isn't too threatening either, amon looks whoosh and mysterious, his build looking a little more action-orientated again.

PR02: Further Character/Costume Research (2/2)

The bounty hunter in my animation is not as 'cool' as I initially imagined in my head, especially now that the protagonist has changed to the Assistant. If she is the one that wins in the end, then she should be the cooler of the two characters, or at least the more interesting one, as that would be much more satisfying for the audience. With that idea in mind, I've decided that I want the bounty hunter to be much shorter than the assistant, as I feel like that will half add to the idea of him being a little less intelligent, as well as make the assistant look more elongated and sophisticated. Using softer shapes than her would make him seem a little friendlier, which I don't necessarily want, however I think that his actions and body language, with perhaps snobbishness and rudeness could help to reverse this. Despite the assistant ultimately being the 'main character' of this, I want to keep her very angular, as that is much more synonymous with the trickster archetype which she fits into, meaning that it would work best if the hunter contrasted this. More rectangle shapes would maybe work best with him, and I wouldn't have to make the edges as soft so long as I didn't make them as extremely angular as the assistant.

I like this design as it very much goes for the less-than-intelligent kind of personality, but also shows that the character probably has the physical strength and toughness if he needs it, which is important for my character since he needs to be believable as a bounty hunter.

After talking about my ideas, someone brought up the idea of my using Danny DeVito as inspiration for part of this character, which I found interesting. Animation-wise, he could definitely be good reference for movement etc but he doesn't have quite the build I'm thinking about for this character (which I'm mostly considering in my head to be 'tanky but tiny').

Salvador from Borderlands 2 is also a character that I always think about when talking about smaller, buffer characters. the above illustration shows both him and the more normally proportioned Axton, which makes the comparison easier. Most of Salvador's design is his torso, with his legs only taking up a bit of space in comparison so that his chest and arms are the parts of his design that stands out the most. I think that this keeps the emphasis on his strength, which stops him from looking quite so silly.

Heavy from TF2 isn't quite as small as my other research, but still has the strong but not so intelligent look about him. I think that it's important to notice that even though his proportions are more realistic to the other characters that I've looked up, his body is still at least as long as his legs, if not a little bit longer. Not a single one of these designs has legs that are longer than their bodies, which really helps add to the top heavy feel of the character. I need to make sure that I incorporate this idea into my character so that his proportions work for his personality.

 It is interesting to think about how the bounty hunter is usually the morally dubious kind of character, and so could fit the trickster archetype in some situations depending on their methods, but I suppose this time I just have two characters that are dubious in their own ways, and so the bounty hunter may just be getting what he deserves anyway.

PR02: Further Character/Costume Research (1/2)

I want to look at a few more specific examples of body language and character types for my characters now that I have a very solid idea of what they are like, so I've collected more research to inspire my designs.

I decided to research a little into traditional femme fatales, as they are a very iconic archetype that the audience understands straight away. The character isn't completely a femme fatale, as I haven't written her in here to be particularly seductive or mysterious, just a dubious character with a few secrets and good timing. This doesn't mean that I can't look into making the character a little more into this kind of archetype, even without changing the script. Just her body language and actions, if a lot more seductive before she manipulates the bounty hunter and gets away could make her a lot closer to this archetype already. It is something I'll have to think about however; I'm not a fan of making the only female character in things sexy and mysterious, especially from all of my dealings with feminism in our CoP project, however if it works for the animation and makes her much more understandable to the audience then it may be much more effective to do that.

I'm still experimenting with how western to make the character with my current research, and I don't think adding too much to that already would help me, so I think I'll try to focus on incorporating the body language and attitude into my designs for her.

Tutorial Feedback

The main topics of our discussion were thinking about how individual pieces of clothing/accessories could show a character's personality, including looking at the use of textures. I also need to look at exaggeration, and how the characters will look next to each other, as a lot of my designs are similar heights and proportions, making them look boring together. Much of my influence is from superhero/action cartoons like Avatar and Young Justice which keep their designs relatively similar, but that's not the audience I'm designing for right now, so I need to try to break out of that. Emotional cues are another important thing to consider, so I need to continue to explore them through my designs as well.

PR02: Character Design 3

I went back to trying to get the body styles with as many straight lines as possible, which I like on the third design, although her hair and face doesn't quite work. I like the outfit as well, but these three still just feel really boring and uninteresting, so I wanted to go back to the original style that I have been thinking of.

I like these designs much more now, and I think the poses help even if they do look a little bit stiff. I also like the simplicity of the first face which is something I'd like to think about more. I love the way the shorts look on the second character with the detail of the belt, though her whole design makes the character look a lot younger than intended.

These two designs don't quite feel like an assistant type character either but they have definitely helped me to decide that this is the style that I want to move forwards with, and I can get to designing the costume and other aspects of the character without having to decide on a new style as well.

PR02: Background Test 2

Next, I added a screen tone over the last image. I actually really like the effect, but my only worry is whether or not this could effect viewers' eyes at a larger size, which I will have to look into.

I tried using the screen tone as a 'dissolve' layer to give the appearance of sand/texture, but everything just looks somewhat bland and boring. This may work for much subtler, softer backgrounds, but not for  this sort of background right now.

Screen tone without lines looked good as well, and I would be tempted to use a style like this if I can make sure that the screen tone doesn't hurt peoples' eyes. I've had good feedback about the smaller version of this image so far though, so I would like to try to carry on with this.

I do have to think about my different kinds of environments, though. Interiors of buildings may not look so good with this kind of texture, so that needs further testing before a conclusion gets decided.

Although way too saturated, I do like this background a lot. I feel like the shades accurately show the lighting, and I think that the screen tone helps the gradients blend in well. I think that the brightly coloured lines also help with this, which may be worth experimenting with in the future, too. I do not want to force this style, but I hope that it will work as well for the environments I do need to create later.

PR02: Background Test 1

Despite not knowing the exact kind of backgrounds that I want yet, I wanted to test out some ideas and techniques beforehand to get an idea of how everything could look.

Flat unlined colours are my first idea, since the characters themselves will have quite heavy lines and need to stand out enough. I'm unsure about the hales used and the difference between the highlights and  mid tones, but they may look better in a more finished version. Still, the shape of shadows etc are boring despite the reference I used, so it could be worth taking a look at weirder, more different ways of incorporating shadows later on.

Darker shadows looked absolutely awful on this. There may be a better way to incorporate these but since I want to keep this simple, I am going to move straight on front his idea.

Adding lines made the background structure stand out more which I liked, and which may have helped with the darker shades if I'd have wanted to continue on with them. I don't want the background to stand out too much, but I do think that they look nice so I'd like to consider them along with some other techniques.

Adding gradients definitely made the background more interesting; the lighting looks more realistic and the contrast is much nicer between the sky and the rocks, especially in terms of saturation. I definitely like the idea of using gradients, and I think that they could help with the atmosphere too as bright weather is definitely an important thing around this place.

Schedule

 I don't want to have too strict a schedule for this, because I'm not sure how the project will evolve and if this may be longer than the next project. I am intending to finish my project around the 17th of March when we have our R&D presentation to start the next project, but I'm okay with some overlap. Ideally, the character designs for the first project "PR02" (PR01 being the work that I am doing on Cara's project) will be done around the end of February along with the story and script, giving me the rest of the time to work on props and backgrounds as I haven't had much experience with them yet and am not too sure how they will go. I feel like if I had my schedule super specific, it will be easier to get stressed and feel like I'm falling behind which could hinder my progress,  so for the time being I think that this is the most efficient way for me to work.

When I move on to my second project, I will think about the scheduling again for that separately, especially since not all details about it have been decided yet.

PR01: Character Design

Cara needs a thug type character in her animation to pursue the main character.

After drawing body type ideas I asked Cara which ones she preferred and she liked the bigger, wide chested ones with simple legs. I created a silhouette on it and placed it beside her character to see if the proportions worked well together and if they needed changing or not. After looking back at my research, I realised that a lot of thuggish, brawn over brain types were at least 50% torso or more - the legs were always she same height or shorter than the chest, and the bigger the difference the more thug-like they looked. We ended up going for the right middle once, as the proportions made him look thuggish enough but it still worked next to the main character - he didn't look too big or too short.

Cara liked the thumb-shaped heads best from my sketchbook so that was the basic shape that I went for for these designs. The hooked nose and double chin definitely makes the character look a lot more 'thuggish'. I like the top and the last ones on the right hand side the most; I think that the head shapes work well with the body and they both have a clear personality. The bottom one looks much meaner and menacing while the top on looks pretty dumb. Cara like the menacing one the most, so I moved on with that.

Next I thought about the specifics of the outfit; Cara wanted to keep it very simple as she had a lot to animate, so a lot of the ideas revolved around the neck and belt area. We wanted to make sure that the stomach was well defined and it didn't look boring. We ended up going for the last one, as the neckline of the vest was just the right size to to balance the outfit along with a longer vest and thicker belt.

I did Cara a really quick back view to make it easier for her to animate.

PR02: Story Ideas (3/3)

I found the idea of the criminal getting away much more interesting that the Bounty Hunter winning and capturing them, especially since the Bounty Hunter doesn't actually drive much of the story. Since the criminal drives most of it, I think that they should be the main character, and so they should win at the end the day to make the ending more satisfying.

This next page was me toying with ideas as the criminal gives her wanted poster to the Bounty Hunter, trying to intentionally lay the trap. I still needed to find a way for the criminal to look different from the wanted poster, and a reason why the Bounty Hunter might accept it off them from the first place.

I tried planning out the story against a 5 act structure to help me plan out the important, specific parts of the story that I would need. I put fighting guards etc as the climax of the story at the start, but I didn't want fighting to be the main part of this. When I included chase scenes so far, they were in the 'falling action' part which sounds like they would be quite boring. I moved the chase scene to the climax which makes much more sense, and chase scenes are usually quite tense, especially when you don't know who might come out on top, which I think may happen in my story. I've never really written to this exact structure before, but I think it has helped me actually realise the impart parts of my story and where I want the audience engaged the most.

The feedback that I got helped me to decide to make the criminal start out as the Bounty Hunter's assistant, and it is purely by coincidence that he ends up with her poster. The assistant didn't expect to let her past catch up with her so quickly, but she is in a prime position to manipulate to situation for her benefit. She has never been able to resist stealing certain things (money? art? artefacts?) and since the Hunter is already making a plan as she is rumored to be in this part of country, the assistant might as well make it a plan that she can benefit from. In the feedback I got, most of the responses was that an art or artefact thief would be more interesting than just a normal thief after money and it would almost make it easier for me to show her getting away with just one thing than a lot of money.

I would like to make this story one without dialogue to see how far my storytelling skills can take me. This will mean that body language and specific character actions will be even more important, which I'm looking forwards to exploring, I'm going to create a premise and then a script, and see if I can manage to tell the story as simply as possible.

PR02: Story Ideas (2/3)

Thinking about the kinds of twists I could have in more short film was one of the things I think that helped me get the more solid ideas down. Reversal of Motive fits quite well with a lot of the earlier ideas that I had, but it felt a little boring when I thought of all of the other things that I could have happening after writing this page. Reversal of perception could be interesting, making the setting completely crazy and different when the character first steps out of a tavern or something like that, but it didn't inspire me that much plot wise

The Reversal of Identity idea made me think that it could be interesting if the Bounty Hunter themselves was the criminal on a wanted poster, but if he was the only one doing the hunting not much would really happen there as the poster could just be destroyed. Someone else being the criminal instead and deceiving the Bounty Hunter was a much more interesting idea.

I liked the idea of using bait to try and capture the criminal, but if they were in on the plan all along they could manipulate if very easily and have a better shot at stealing the loot. They could even argue for better loot, to make absolute sure that they could get the best prize possible before making off with it and carrying out the biggest con they ever had. It was at this point that I started rooting for my villain.

My initial thought was a train heist - the criminal could be well known for robberies on trains, so they could work with the bounty hunter to make sure a lot of loot is stored on there and then create the plan using the different train carriage as obstacles and finding a way to make off with the loot and even detatch part of the train to leave the guards and bounty hunter behind as it is revealed that she is the criminal, but it didn't really feel like a clean getaway with half a train held hostage and probably too much loot to carry once off the train. 

PR02: Story Ideas (1/3)

I already knew the kind of setting I wanted for my story - a western, with maybe some modern elements to stop it from being too cowboy-ish. I also wanted to many character to be a bounty hunter, because I thought that that would be a fun character to base the story around.

I wanted to keep in mind the things that I learned from researching short films, so I tried to think of what kinds of urgent goal the character might have that could drive the story - are they on a quest to retrieve something, do they want to save someone or are they just after money? I also tried to map out the kind of personality they may have, to determine what kind of goal and motive they were likely to have. My initial thought was to have some kind of cool, laid back, maybe almost lazy kind of character who prefers to do stuff on his own terms, which helped me make the list of flaws towards the bottom of the page

Why is the character a bounty hunter? Figuring out their life and motive will help me build a much more solid character, and should help me to determine what they would do in certain situations and why. This lead me to think of things related to their urgent goal and who I could get a twist ending from this - the lazy, cheeky kind of character is actually doing everything that they are doing for some nice, sweet kind of reason rather than just for pleasure or out of boredom, leaving the audience with positive feelings to take away with them.

I wanted to make the characters relatable through either his flaws or the things that happen to him. Since not everyone watching will share the same flaws even if it's common, I thought that making a list of bad things that could happen to a character would be a good way to help me think about relatable situations.

Obviously some are a bit more specific to this genre than to most people's real life, but I think that if you can tell how the character is feeling from that bit of misfortune that happened then the audience should be able to relate to that, at least. This could also help me with the comedy part of the genre and could be a possible starting point for the actual story.

PR02: Character Design 2

Next, I decided to have a little experiment with faces, trying to go a little more exaggerated like Valley or Moore. I wanted to make sure that they didn't end up too similar to either, though. I think that the first and further on the first row, the third and fifth on the second row and the second on the third row are the most effective. If I'm honest, I dislike a lot of the others; they are just flat and boring and just aren't that nice to look at. The more elongated faces that I have are much more interesting, but I only like two of the shorter, more wide faces. I think that the chin on the second, third row and fifth, second row work for the wider faces, in contrast to the chins on the longer ones that mostly curve inwards. I think having those opposites at least will be effective in differentiating my characters and giving them different personalities, which is important for me. A lot of classmates also like the longer faces, so it would be nice to use them in the future.

Again, my opinions vary quite a lot on the female face designs. I like the first, third and fourth on the first row, the second on the second row and the second on the third row. I think that they show the personalities of the characters very well, and have variety while staying simple. It was fun to experiment more with the jaw shapes here, and too my surprise I think I actually got a better variety than on my male characters. I think that usually it is easier with male characters to add variety to all aspects of the face without having to worry, whereas in the animation industry there's the whole thing with keeping a female character looking 'pretty' which means less risks and diversity between character faces, I can see how some of my designs do not look conventionally pretty, but I don't want to think of that as a problem and risk my characters being plain old boring characters with no personality and just looking the same as any other woman character in my animation. I got a lot of positive comments about the first row (apart from the second design) which I am happy with, since I also find them to be the more interesting designs.

The legs are starting to get boring on here which I this is in part because of the lack of thick lines and sharp angles. None of the designs themselves are too interesting either, although I like having a bit more detail around the knees on the third design to stop the bottom half of the character from looking too boring.

 The first two designs on this page are much more interesting and I like the faces, although I don't think they are that unique. It's definitely a good starting point either way, so I might try and develop them in my next designs. The legs are still not the right shape again, losing some of the more interesting aspects of my earlier designs. I like the plain bootless with the detail at the top though; this contrast between detail and not makes them interesting and easy to read, especially compared to the tights design on the first character. Their clothes are still too boring, but hopefully when I'm finished with the script and idea (which should be soon) I'll have a better idea of their personality and how exactly to move the design forwards and away from the idea of just experimenting with the style.

PR02: Character Design 1

I started off my designs taking influence form TWEWY, but trying to keep the face much less 'anime' and more western. I enjoyed trying to add more curves to lines that I may otherwise draw straight, and the sharper angles were very fun to try to incorporate. As I did have a 100% decided on idea yet, I wanted to take this chance to experiment with vague concepts of what the characters could be rather than jumping straight into designing them. I think having this freedom first really helps me to get into it and figure out what exactly I want to do with the look the the characters (and by extension, the whole setting). I got good comments from classmates about the legs on all of the characters, and the sideburns on the last character. I think that the thighs on the last character are a bit too boring, and could be curves more although this might not be a necessity if the rest of the design does have a few more complicated shapes; I definitely love where the character's pants meet his shoes; it might be a little too much, shape wise, but I think it looks interesting and balances out all of the extra details and shapes at the top of the design.

I did wonder wether or not I would have trouble doing different body types, or much more muscular characters, so I want to try maybe some thicker arms and see how they could work.

I think that the leg and arm shapes of the first design are going in the right direction for this kind of style, but the proportions look awkward and boring. The other two characters on the page are even more boring, and not worth talking about too much; they've lost a lot of the interesting shapes and just don't stand out.

I had a little trouble exaggerating the character to be even more muscly; the second design is entertaining, but not quite there. The third is closer, but maybe wider shoulders, slightly shorter legs and a more squished down torso would emphasise the top-heaviness that I am aiming for. I think that it will be better to come back to this after deciding on the characters that I do actually need, rather than labouring over something that might not even be used yet.

I think that the first two characters on this page show their personalities quite well, partly through their postures. I really like the shape of their torsos, as they are simply but describe their body shapes well. I think, proportion wise, that the first design on this page is one of the more effective out of all of the ones that I've drawn so far, though his face is a little boring. I would definitely like to incorporate parts of this design into some of my later designs though. From feedback, I saw that people thought that the character further right's legs were a bit too thin, which I wholly agree with. Maybe the head and torso should be much more extreme and thinner to work with this, but it would be awkward to animate and just looks like his legs could easily snap, so I'll concentrate on using the sort of shapes that the earlier designs have.