Chelsea Butler

As I did with my other character, René, I wanted to do a bit of exploration for my other character, Linette. Below are some mood boards that I put together to help me figure out her design. Much like the celebrity references, I wanted Linette to have a rounded face and a kind smile. She is the type of person who is strong and will fight for what she believes in. I have once again decided to create two types of designs, one more cartoon-y and the other a little more realistic. Linette's main features include her rounded face, her smile, her long swooping nose and her wavy, middle-parted brunette hair. As she is going to become a ghost in my story, I have also added in some designs of her "spirit form" where she is predominantly one colour and translucent.  I gave her a variety of outfit designs where I tried to reflect the fashion of the 1920s to see what she could look like. With her ghostly form, I am unsure whether to have her in a lo...

For my Premise project, I wanted to push myself in terms of the character designs. As this story is based on my previous character project, I wanted to develop the style a bit more to suit the romantic atmosphere. I'm starting this design exploration with my character, René, the male lead for my animation. I put together some mood boards for his appearance to get an idea of how he could look. My tutor, Alan, suggested I collect some images of celebrities that I could use as reference and inspiration for his looks. I wanted René to have a soft and kind face, but still quite chiselled to match his aristocratic background. I also wanted to figure out what kind of clothes he would wear, so I sketched some outfit variations, keeping in mind that because he is from an aristocratic family, he would be well dressed in smart suits. I also created some quick colour variations, keeping the palette neutral to represent the era that I'm basing the story in, 1920s France. ...

For my Premise project, I decided to create an initial storyboard to help me visualise how the animation could potentially unfold. My main focus in this storyboard is to keep the camera close to the character’s faces to evoke a lot of emotion through their expressions and body language. The beginning of the storyboard shows the male character, René, seeing flashbacks of himself and his love, Linette, spending time together, so I need to now consider how I will portray these memories through either editing or the actual animation. Another thing that I need to consider is how to texture the 3D model for Linette when she becomes a ghost. The idea is that she will be slightly transparent but not to the point where she will be hard to distinguish. I am now currently considering how I can push the characters designs even further and also incorporate the Art Nouveau style in to the final animation.

For my animation, I’ve decided to create some rough storyboards so I can get down what I think the opening scene would look like. The idea was to show René looking at the Eiffel Tower, grieving the loss of his love Linette, and as he looks around the park, he sees flashbacks of times that they spent together. This is so that I can introduce the relationship between the characters without making the film too long. I feel that I might struggle with this a little as there is a lot of ideas that I want to include, but I don’t want to make it too lengthy. I am going to continue roughing out how I think the scenes will play out.

After speaking with my tutors, Alan and Justin, it was discussed that for this project I could do a continuation of my Character Design project. I really enjoyed this idea as I had a lot of fun with my Character project and wanted to develop it further. To begin with, I quickly made some influence maps to remind myself of where I want to go with this animation. I was advised to look at Disney’s Paperman (2012) in regards to animation style. I also want to incorporate the Art Nouveau style as well, so it will be interesting to see how that will translate in to 3D animation. I also added in some images from Disney’s Enchanted (2007) as I liked the colours and art style in the animated segments of the film. In regards to the story of my animation, it will be a romantic piece set in 1920’s Paris, France. It’s about two lovers of different social status who meet and fall in love, but one of them meets a tragic fate and passes away. The animation will be about how they ov...

After speaking with Alan and Justin in regards to the Premise project, I’ve come to the realisation that I wanted to make my project character based, as I would like to see myself as a Character Designer, or Character Design Artist, after graduation.  I initially had an idea, relating to something personal for me, about someone being chased by a monster but then making peace with it. I’m not completely set on this idea as of yet, however I’m having a little difficulty coming up with something that’s not too generic.  I was advised to look at my surroundings in my day-to-day life, and take what I see as some inspiration for my project, perhaps create sentences and keywords that I could refer to. Another approach mentioned was to ask myself a ‘what if’ question and play on the ideas. The other day, as I was taking a walk, I saw some kids in my local park playing pretend together. It got me thinking of how I used to play pretend with my toys. I would dream up a world...

Today's Character lesson was a lot of fun, but quite challenging. We were taught the fundamentals of facial expressions and how they can be important when describing a character. We started off with creating expressions by combining two pre-existing ones. We then were tasked with anthropomorphising everyday objects, and then animals, considering their narrative when thinking of what type of expressions they would have.  Lastly, we then continued to work on our own character projects using today's learnings. Here is an initial design for the two characters that I am creating, René and Linette. I started creating a character expression for Linnete to better understand what kind of person she is, which in turn lead me to making her facial features a little more unique. I'm planning on developing this design further, along with René, as I feel he is currently too plain looking.

To kickstart our first Character Design lesson of the year, our tutor, Justin, tasked us with researching and studying specific objects that he assigned us. I was given the "bunsen burner", to which I then set off and recreated models and diagrams of the item. This is so that we can practise getting in to the habit of researching any and all subject matter when starting new projects. Next, we then had to discuss what type of characters would most likely use these objects. Initially, I started down the typical "mad scientist" route, but when I delved a bit deeper, I thought to myself, what about a student? Would this student be young or old? Would they use it for good, or for mischief? I started off with a child who would be cheeky and use it for pranks, but on the flip side, I started to think of a child who wanted to use science for good. Perhaps this child has a hero complex? I thought about the bunsen burner being a tool in their mission to create exp...

Villain Sidekick/Pet

For my character design project, I chose the three cards: Stealth Wildlife Liquid The idea so far is that the story behind the game that this character will be featured in goes like so; deep within the ocean, past many reefs and bundles of seaweed, there is a kingdom. This kingdom is habited by many fantastical ocean creatures, one of them being the king. The king lives within an extravagant palace, and deep in the heart of the palace lies the powerful force that protects and energises the kingdom; a precious pearl, almost as large as one's head, that breathes life into the kingdom. But one day, an evil creature, once a member of the royal court but now banished, stole the pearl from the kingdom so that they may claim the power for themselves. With the kingdom in danger, the king calls forward any brave soul to go and retrieve the pearl. A plucky young creature steps forward, in hopes of proving himself to the kingdom that he has the potential to become something m...

For the beginning of our group projects, we were asked to chose 3 cards to help us create our story. The cards my group chose were: In a Laboratory Tonal Montage Jealousy After weeks of brainstorming and refining plots and experimenting with the technique of tonal montage, we have finally come to an agreement of how the story for our animation will play out. So far, the story will be based around two robots. A lonely scientist has spent many years of his life dedicated to creating a new generation of robot. Robots that are capable of feeling and experiencing human emotions. But this is no simple task, for it involved a lot of trial and error, resulting in copious amounts of unsuccessful experiments. The most recent model of robot is still functioning, until it discovers that there is a newer robot being created on the table next to it. The now old robot becomes jealous of this newer model, but due to the emotion of jealousy being so vast and indescribable, the old robot ...

Here's an example as to how I could go about creating my environment. To make it more authentic to a side scroller game, I have included a "ceiling and floor" which I have brought into the foreground, and then I pushed the background behind by using slightly lighter colours. In a way, this emphasises the effect of a tunnel, which I wanted to convey here in particular to display how I thought the bloodstream could look. The little critter on screen is an example design for the sporozoite organism.

I have to admit, this project is pretty tough, and unfortunately I have been slightly struggling with grasping my concept. But I have managed to jot down an idea of how I could take it, and to demonstrate this, I have drawn up a few cell thumbnails to portray the style I could aim for. As I will be creating a "game" to show the life cycle, I thought about creating sprites for the cells and they could potentially become playable characters within the sequence.

And so the design process begins! And I thought that I should start with some character designs, and for one of my main characters that will appear in the character select screen, I have chosen to create a mosquito, seeing as it plays quite a role in the malaria life cycle. Because I am creating a "game", I wanted my character to appear somewhat cartoon-y. I didn't want to over complicate the designs as I thought it would be best to keep it simple for when I transform the character into a game sprite. I looked at images of mosquitos and jotted down a few key words to aid with my designs. The outer shell of the insects body appears robust, hence the armoured outfit, and the limbs are thing and skeletal, so I played with the thickness of the arms and legs, including sharp edges on the armour to display his bad guys traits.

Initial Storyboard by OhThatChels

Diva Disaster

Once again, I haven't named my characters as of yet, BUT I think I've figured out how I want them to look. So without further ado, I present character 2! Edit: I've made her legs less bulging and a bit more elegant in shape!

Here we have my first leading lady for my tightrope walker story! Despite the lack of name, she still has her personality! I was hoping to make this character rather girly and prim, a sort of snooty character with a competitive edge, but still loveable/memorable nevertheless! I'm hoping to make her counterpart contrast with her "princessy" manner. I was rather inspired after having been linked this video, with many thanks to  Julien  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eebQYIUxjGw I also want my style to be quite cartoony to emphasise the comedic atmosphere, so I took inspiration from designs such as these:   So looking at the blocky shapes and sharp eyes, and taking influence from the lack of outlines in the art of the video sent, I came up with this! Below is a basic shape of what the body and proportions of this character looks like, and then the actual design of said character, including a potential costume design too. I wanted to make the pro...