Designing A Character

To begin my character design, I had a good think about what kind of character I could have in my animation. I first brainstormed some ideas. I intend to make sure the character I have is in a humanoid form, which makes the rigging easier to control rather than having more than 2 arms and legs, which could over complicate things for this practice.

I find my best way of coming up with character ideas is to first try drawing down on paper what comes to mind first and then expand these ideas by looking for inspiration online and at other peoples works.

These are designs based around alien features. I wanted to make my character long and skinny. I was inspired to make the face look as creepy as I could make them. The left character's mouth was inspired from Doctor Who, whilst the middle characters face I relate the striking eye resemblance to the Daruma piece and the character design on the right I wanted to make an alien which had legs for ears and a striking face which makes me think of the statues found on Easter Island. The middle character on this page is my favourite design as it has a detailed face and all rounded good designed body. It looks rather ominous with its lanky body and striking face.

 

 

With these designs, I was thinking more about basing the character around a costume/shell/skin. I was heavily inspired from some of Michael Jackson's costumes from his shows. The far left design is a mix between megaman and one of his costumes. The second one I felt as if it could have an asian appearance, so I added a turban. The third design I wanted to look spikey & have scorpion like points, whilst having a blocky face. Lastly I have a robot looking, metalic armoured character.

I also tried drawing some humanoid animalistic characters. The first two are birdlike, the first being a penguin and the second more or a parrot/peacock appearance. I wanted them both to have sharp eyes like birds tend to have. The third design is a cow but in a devilish style, using long horns and giving it a human kind of body. It reminded me of a character from Final Fantasy 8. Lastly I wanted to draw a mischievious looking character, So i went with a cat... As I went on to draw it, I realised that it more or less became Puss in Boots.