Male Gnome finished

At the beginning of this project, I thought that I was going to love this character, but with any hero type character I have had problems with him. He has always come close but never truly there, I know what he will look like but I have wanted to draw him that way before I modeled him. 

These are my beginning designs for the day.

 The last page was my more successful page.



The expression sheets helped me so much when doing the female gnome so I thought I would just jump to it for the male gnome, and once again, it became a lot more enjoyable.

These expressions are really working for me - I think they show his character nicely.

Once again I finished on the colour experiments but I did not go into too much detail - my favourites are 1,2,7 and 10

Female gnome Designing process

Okay so this is Monday part 2 - the female gnome, I'm very happy with this character, she's really sweet and reminds me of my Nan, which was what I was hoping for. The plan all along with this character was to not spend too much time on her because she is only seen for a few seconds. I have spent around three hours on her today and i'm impressed with the amount of work I have produced for her. 

I really enjoyed doing the expression because they gave me a fun way of anticipating the character's turnarounds - plus it helped in making her seem alive. 

I ended this session with a few colour experimentations - my favourites are 7 and 8 

Fish update

I have been keeping myself busy by drawing some more images of the fish, I was keeping in mind the characteristics of the fish but trying to stay fresh at the same time. This allowed me to come up with some different styles and proportions - I have been enjoying my time with this fish so far.

I experimented with different scales - larger belly, large fins, larger eye - just so that I can experiment every possibility.

I drew some more images and tried working in some colour experiments

After a lot of experimentation, I came to the conclusion that the character just has to be black or possibly a ver park purple or blue.

I am now really happy with this character, the next job is to do expression sheets and turnarounds and then move on, there is plenty to do, and it is about time i did some designs for the pond. I pretty much know what it will look like because some of the design work was done in the animatic but I would like to focus in on some areas like the water feature and the plant life.

Fish design process

Research

My research started with looking at common pond fish - the search came up with fish like Goldfish, Koi, Ghost Koi, Common Carp, Sturgeon, Catfish, etc.

I really like the large mouth of the Catfish

The Goldfish is beautiful, but with some subtle added features it could look beautiful yet deadly

I found the spiky fin of the Perch beautifully dangerous.

I then remembered a fish that my brother had in his fish tank a few years back. The Black Moor Goldfish is perfect for the type character I need because it ticks all the boxes. 

There appears to be a slight lid on those massive eyes, which gives me the ability to make an angry frown. I also like how like how the overall shape of the fish is a triangle, yet the body is still very round, giving an evil yet playful character. 

Designing 

This was a very fun character to draw, the large eyes made it fun to watch them come alive, and the agile body helped make a fluid motion in the drawing. 

Here is an initial turnaround which as the character develops, so will the turnaround.

Focusing on Style

I'm not liking where my gnome is right now, so I have decided to redesign him but focusing more on style instead of accessories and colour. I redrew the gnome whilst looking at some of Chuck Jones' tom and Jerry cartoon images, and instantly had something that I liked a lot better than all the other designs. I showed Alan and he helped me push it further and told me some pointers I must keep in mind when drawing in the style of Chuck Jones.

I started by looking at some well know Chuck Jones characters like Wille Coyote, roadrunner, Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny (although he didn't create Bugs, he certainly made a big stamp on his character) 

What I like about this style is the clean outlines, the simplicity and the expressive poses that tell the story. I have now tried to use this in my work.

Already my drawings have become more expressive, I thought it best to design whilst in the poses I will use in the animation. for me this was a new way of doing things, because before I would normally design in front or side poses which lead to a flat and boring design. These are way more impressive to me and they really show the character. 

Now that I loosened up in the drawing, I wanted to work on the scale and structure of my character, so that I could then go back to posing but in a more focused way. 

I took one of the old drawings then morphed it into a certain shape that I like, I chose the fourth one as the best one. 

I then worked on skeletal structure and then cleaning up the outside lines. 

This is a drawing pose that I have put through the design process. I ended up putting a faded paint texture on the paint, it doesn't look great but its a start.  

Designing the Fish

With the Fish I am going for an evil yet playful character because the fish doesn't want to kill the gnome but just stop him from getting to the other side of the pond. So what I want from the character is a playful yet slightly evil exterior, large eyes with a way to get a frown in the face with out giving the fish an eyebrow, and a large tail to do some strong swimming and whacking the gnome in the animation, which will be in the animatic soon.

I so far have two designs for this :-

 These are both goldfish, I was advised by Alan to use this fish, we found some images of goldfish with large stomachs and thought that this would be a good area to use to show that it is either always hungry or that it has room for the gnome. I have given the both quite sharp fins to show its evilness. Making a frown on a fish was obviously hard to do but I found that goldfish a sort of ridge that go up the centre of the face, and I chose to make this the area to move to make a frown - I think it works well.  

After a talk with Alan - Character Design

I recently had a talk with Alan, firstly about the design of the main gnome character. He had some very important pointers that have helped the character out tremendously. He advised me to focus on the curves of my character, this will give the character a style and flowing look throughout. He also wanted me to make the bread a little larger because he liked the way it covered the body. It also advised me not to keep a mouth in the design so that all the emotion for the gnome came from his eyes and eyebrows.

So this weekend I went away and did a few drawings - They instantly looked a lot better and that they had a life to them.

This is what I came up with -

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As I was playing around with proportions, things started to slot into place. I had to allocate enough bread in the character for it to cover him yet I had to make it practical to model and animate. At first he was really chubby but as the design process moved forward, he started to lose some weight.

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Summary of the Day - 19th February

Today has been a very good day for me, I have sorted out some problems and I now have an insite into the look of my characters. I think I have been wuite productive today, and I hope it continues - I'm getting really excited for my animation, ideas are constantly popping in my head - I have some ideas on how to change my animatic for the better which hopefully makes the animation clearer in the end.

Female Gnome Design 01

My initial thought with the female character was to have a long blonde haired beautiful gnome, but after drawing the beginning ideas for the male - that idea for the female no longer made sense. So I have gone for an elderly lady gnome, which fits a lot better and I hope it will be cuter in the end. I am far from finished with this characters design, but i liked this as a base - Bo has mentioned that she isn't cute enough and that the hat makes her look like a witch - which I must say, I agree with.

Gnome designs 03

This design is a bit more pleasing to me - it is more stylised and charming. However it still doesn't tick all my boxes because I don't think this will be easily animatable. But I like my progress - I am going to look at some new character design books and hopefully they can help me.

Gnome Designs 02

These designs are now getting better, I really like these, I'm gonna work on them a bit more and hopefully get a more refined design.