The sidekick has been found!

Over the last week or so I've been having some serious trouble trying to visualise this character. However a couple of days ago I had a chat with some fellow students about what this character could look like and act like. They reminded me to go back to square one and come up with his characteristics and personality so that his appearance can be fleshed out on top of that.


My favourite idea that popped up was he could be hyperactive, very energetic and always wanting to move. I hadn't thought of this before and it already sounded like a sidekick. I could instantly think of a couple of sidekick characters that were funnily energetic. For example, "Hammy the squirrel"  voice by Steve Carrell in "Over the hedge" directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpartrick. Also Twitchy voiced by Cory Edwards from hoodwinked directed by Cory and Tood Edwards.












From this I thought again about the speed and the desert planet that this character will live on. This lead me to think about ostriches, cheetahs, lizards and things. Now I really like the shape of an ostrich and I think the base of the neck would be a great place for the hero's saddle. Also I think that a large head would add a comedic look and large eyes like Chameleon eyes will add innocence.


These are my initial sketches -

I thought that these were going okay but something was missing and I just didn't like it, so I went on further with more research.

So I looked at the Panther Chameleon and the Hadrosaurus, this allowed me to apply a pattern and a horn.

This is what I got -

I really like this drawing, its cute, its anatomy works and looks like a sidekick character. There was many things I was thinking of when I was drawing this character, for example the skull is large to allow the under bone horn to stick out the back and then the neck follows underneath. I want this horn to act like the ears of a dog, and I want it to react determine the emotion of the character. For example when it is happy it will point up, when it is sad it will flop down, if angry then the horn will point back and hard. I gave the character small arms to give another comedy essence and also something to wave around when happy. 

So this character is now working for me! :D

My next step was to draw it from the front, this turned out to be a probelm because it just didn't look right and it started to annoy me!!

This is what I had -

It looks okay but I'm just not happy.

So I asked fellow students again and dan managed to come up with a look that worked. He told me that if I have the eyes at a slanted angle then it wont look angry and thats what i have been trying to get past. I took his advice and came up with this.

 Working a lot better!





For my next task I have to work on the colour of the character. At first I was keeping in mind the colour sceme of the western earthy and hot colours. However while I was colouring the character in I remembered the chameleon's skill of changing colour and thought I could hav the character change colour depending on his mood. Then I came across this blog that describes what colours show what moods.

Basically the colours go:

Green - Neutral, Fine, Envy, Jealous
Blue - Happy, Relaxed and free - however I thought blue was used for sadness? 
Red - Anger, Stressed, Passion , Love
Yellow - Distracted, Emotional, Imaginative.

These colours are interesting but I need a colour that is the main colour of the characters skin. I kept in mind that he is naturally hyper and energetic, also very fast. So I took a look at the cheetah and Springbok, the first and second fastest animals in the world.

I noticed the connection of the golden and black coat that the two have, so I gave this to the sidekick.

This colouring was my first attempt and its ment to look bold and cartoony for the show. I like it but he looks poisonous rather than friendly

This one is a lot better, I tried copying the colour of the cheetah and then added a bit more yellow and brown to get that golden tan look. I like this one a lot more than the first.

Just to finish up, I tested the emotions colours on the character and made the pattern darker to bring out that colour.

Here we have sad, anger and Jealousy. The bottom two (anger) have different colour parttern, this is because I was testing how the much of a change the character went through in each emotion. I also had an idea to have the horn's colour bolder than the body so it makes the horn the maximum emotion area.