Eye's Inspiration

One of the most important things about a characters face is their eye's. The Eyes are the first thing people look at and they tell us a lot of information about the character.   I have looked into Nemi comic strips before and I think that the style of the eye's would help to convey a simplistic and expressive look to 

my Pocahontas character.

The other alternative was to try the dotted eye approach which works well in 2D but I'm not sure if it will have the range of expression that I'm looking for.

Project Brief

"We would like your students to design and animate some characters for us for a potential advertisement for London Zoo. We are thinking about using a visual style that reflects tradional  "Claymation" techniques but will be generated using CG processes.  The characters should be worked up from the following list."

1. Willie Billiams- "A hyperactive nine year old on his first visit to London Zoo with an obsessive interest in creepy crawlies."

2. Pocahontas Billiams- "Willies sister, she's seven years old but much more relaxed and more knowing than her sibling.  She wants to be a gorilla."

3. Wilhemina Billims- " Willie and Pocahontas's grandmother, she thinks everything smells bad and is worried that a chinp or one of those nasty bonbos might escape and "Poo" in her hat."

4. Wee Eck McGlone- "London Zoo's long suffering head keeper sixty, bald, curmudgeonly, Scottish, fiercly patriotic and obsessive about sweeping up dung."

5. Cornelius- "A middle aged silver back gorilla, the most civilised and sesible occupant of the zoo by far."

The Tweenies

I love these guys.  I think that their design is extremely clever and also appealing to kids.  I like the use of colour which has been used to attract the attention of children.  I think that the use of colour has also been used to portray their personalities.  

I will definatly take on board the use of colour in my design for Pocahontas Billiams.

The structual designs for the Tweenies are simplistic which makes them easy on the eye.  Features, such as wrinkles and eye lashes have been removed to make them look as simple as possible.

I think that the use of colour makes them look less threatening and creates an energy that kids like.  

Getting some basic modelling out the way

I'll go back into this and sculpt it so it fits the concept design. I'll model the head in a seperate file and try and add controllers to it (fingers crossed).

What I'm going to be doing

I have chosen the character design brief and I will be specialising in Concept and Modelling/Texturing. I am chosen to do create one character instead of two because I am going to Rig and animate my character.

I am following the original breif and I have chosen to create the little girl who wants to be a gorilla. I thought about combing her ambition to be a gorilla in the character design itself. I my idea is to have her dressed in a gorilla suite to add more personality to her. I'm also thinking about colours that I'll be using for her. This character is for kids, so I was thinking along the lines of bright attractive colours which all children like but I want to give her a bit of edge too.

I will also be doing concept art the the little boy as well but I won't be modelling him.

At the moment I am developing my characters and I have started modelling the main body to my character.

Research

Starting to research in Spine Set up so that it can stretch.  I'll be working through a book called Body language by Eric Allen & Kelly L Murdock.