A Terrifying Crash Course in Character design.

There were two things I knew would take a lot out of me this term I’m honestly surprised to have done as well as as I have. I may even get started on my animation before term ends. (Fingers crossed)

Character design scares me. Trying to get a character right scares me. Last year trying to finalise my characters was where I choked and couldn’t go on (Other animating and writing projects didn’t help). So I took it in stages.

First I drew very simple character sheets over the summer. I didn’t even have my old reference from my comic book project to go off of (it was in Cardiff.) So I really had to wing these.

Once back in Cardiff I had all my reference again. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough to help me finalise my designs. So I decided to be sneaky. I would do my storyboards first with all my reference on hand and figure out what my characters looked like on the fly! it would make my storyboards horribly inconsistent. But it wouldn’t be the first time. My storyboard issues are covered in this journal https://johnhawk.art.blog/2021/11/01/where-i-am-now-and-my-future-fears/

It paid off. After a while I had some idea of what made the characters more like like themselves and less like each other, and a bit about how to make them look like rabbits and not foxes, dogs, or donkeys. I felt ready to start making my character designs.

This were some intense drawings. But I did them. And they came out better than I hoped. At Morgan’s suggestion, I made these a lot bigger than my summer drawings. I think it paid off.

Ghost

White Tail

Strype

I needed a little advice. According to Morgan I broke a cardinal character sheet rule by giving the different poses different expressions. But considering how hard expressions are for me, I need all the practice I can get!

Next I needed to figure out how they would look in colour. I had an idea based on a rough drawing I did.

But I decided to test every colour combination I could first. Starting with White Tail and Strype. And people complain I don’t experiment enough!

This doubled as expression practise. I even experimented with different art styles. Something I’d never done before. But in the end I found one that was almost perfect.

It was almost exactly what I had done in the rough drawing.

Using the colour of one brother and the black outline of the other.

For Ghost I splashed out even harder. I spent over £30 on different coloured pencils to experiment with and experimented ever harder

Only one of the new coloured pencils I bought, Ash Grey, ended up in the final project. I did add some brown into his design as well to add some darkness to contrast to his paleness. But he also ended up very similar to his doodle version. My instincts normally do trump experimentation.

Here is the rough drawing of Ghost and what I settled on. Again, it was almost the exact same colour scheme as in the rough drawing.

Just with black outlines and the Ash Grey colour.

This is one reason I don’t care much for experimentation. I have very strong instincts and I waste time ignoring them.

The best part of this process was it helped me figure out what the eyes should look like. If I wanted coloured irises, black dots, highlights, or such like. I settled black rings that emphasise size and innocence.

Now I had to get ready for the colour character designs. I would trace off the existing character sheets to new pieces of paper using a lightbox. This would also act as clean up and a chance to refine the designs one last time. Make the characters look more consistent and add in the new eye shapes.

I honestly really like how the cleaned up versions look

Ghost

White Tail

Strype

These almost look professional. Can’t believe I made character sheets this good. I showed them to Owen, He liked them too. Just so I’d have them even after being coloured, I’ve photocopied them too.

I finally added colour to my character designs. And now they were finished! I’ve never finished character designs before. I know there are many people for whom this level of drawing is easy. But I’m just glad to have done it.

Strype and White Tail look fine. But I did have to go over some of their linework again. It blended in with the dark colour at first. Specially the interior lines and the sitting poses

But I think they look okay.

Ghost was harder. I still don’t think I’ve got him totally figured out. But the idea of his colours is there

In my downtime between drawings I was also able to make a template for my background.

So I now know exactly what background my rabbits will be moving on. I could pretty much jump straight into animation this if I knew how I was going to blend background and characters together. That’s proving tricky to figure out.

I’m not going to agonise over how the colours of the background and Parsnip should look. I’m just going to to go for it. Simple colours are probably better anyway.

Next I’m going to make a soundtrack to make an animatic with. I’m getting so close to making a real animation I can barely believe it! I hope I pull it off.

But I’ve done both the storyboard and the character sheets! I thought that would take all term But here I am with four weeks spare! Plus I have other things done as evidenced in this journal. Maybe I can pull this off after all?