BA1a: Character Design | Week 8: Final

Character Design is a part of animation that I found very interesting, funny and important. Despite that in the beginning I was not very enthusiastic with the project, but after doing this first task, Character Design is definitely something that I like. However, I started making the submission tasks very close to the end and I think that my project could have been better. My time management of  time was not the best and I think that is reflected in my character’s look and his walking cycle. I also believe that my character is not very flexible and dynamic, and since I had problems managing my time in the last two weeks, I found hard to explore more about his movement and expressions. I should have tried to draw the character in other styles and explore more of his forms. 
One of the things that I liked the most was the simple plasticine model of our character. Creating physically characters is something that I really like and would like to explore in the future. Using softwares like Photoshop and TVPaint, and also hardware like the Wacom tablet was very exciting and fun because it was my first time using that kind of tools to animate, create and colour.
Managing time is something that I should have done better  and also my research blog could be better, but I think my character sheets are good. In overall it was very interesting and fun to create and bring to life a character designed by me. I am looking forward to the next Character Design project. 

BA1a: Character Design | Character Sheets

BA1a: Character Design | Walking Cycle

Since I had an old character that uses a stick to help him walk I had to make one of the steps quicker than the other so that he looked like he hobble. I had trouble aligning the movement of the arms with the movement of the legs and he doesn't show much effort when walking. However I am satisfied with the movement of the legs but not so much with his arms. I should have done his arm or the stick bigger. 

BA1a: Character Design | Walking Search

I also try to find old animated characters walking like Carl or Abe Simpson to help me make my character walking cycle.

BA1a: Character Design | Character Sheets Search

I looked for some model and design sheets in order to help me make my own sheets and  I obviously looked  for the design and models sheets o Carl from Up, but also other characters such as Hades and Jasmine.

BA1a: Character Design | Old People Walking

Since my character is an old guy I watch some videos to analyse their movement and adapt to my character.

BA1a: Character Design | Week 7

This week in character design we had a Photoshop Induction in the Media Lab. It was very interesting and exciting because we use the Wacom tablet to work in the software. Using the tablet in Photoshop is very different that the mouse and also works better since we have more control. I enjoyed a lot and I can look forward to try again when making my character sheets.

BA1a: Character Design | Photoshop Induction

We had a Photoshop Induction where we used the Wacom tablet to draw in Photoshop. We had the chance to recreate Totoro in other colours. It was really cool and it his a lot easier than the mouse. It is something that I would like to explore in the future because it was something that I really enjoyed.

BA1a: Character Design | Week 6

This week was very exciting since we had the opportunity to make a model of our character using Plasticine. I really like to make physical things so I really enjoyed making despite it was only the basic forms of our character. I did some quick colour tests of my character using Photoshop, however the printer had a problem and I was able to printed so I don't know if I am going to have all the homework ready to Monday.

BA1a: Character Design | Rough model Sheet and Colour

I did this rough model sheet with some proportion problems, which I have to improve, so that I could experiment colouring the character.

BA1a: Character Design | Model Making

After choosing the age of our character we did a model  using only the basic shapes of our character. It was very exciting make our character get a 3D form so that we could analyse it better. When making the model I decided that the chin of the character should be more square and bigger so that it could have a more recognisable silhouette.

BA1a: Character Design | Week 5

The tasks are always very funny and this week we added the concept of silhouette and its importance to make a good and recognisable character. At this point I still have some doubts about the style of my character, I thing I am going to make her in another style and see the result and then chose which one I prefer. I really look forward to see what are we going to do next.

BA1a: Character Design | Homework 2

After selecting which character we wanted to work with, we had to do three sketches, which one had to be a different point of his age.

Beiman, N. (2016) Animated performance: Bringing imaginary animal, human, and fantasy characters to life. Second edn. London; New York: Fairchild.

I found here some information about the importance of the shout of an character and how can the silhouette help us to improve and develop a character. The silhouette can show us the flows in the design, in the composition and how readable the character is.

BA1a: Character Design

We started by voting in the character, from the other students, we liked the most. Then we decided which was the character we wanted to work with and we did an exercise about silhouettes. In this exercise we had to draw the silhouette of our character in different poses in 2 minutes, then we started passing the sheets and drawing the silhouettes of the characters of the other students. Doing this exercises was very funny and helped us understand more about our character. However I think the silhouette of my character has to be better and more recognisable. At this point we had to draw our character again but this time we had to use an interesting silhouette made by the other students and then classified. The last thing we had to do was to make a kind of totem pole with the form of our character, so I mixed the head and the feet and did curly forms in blue, and then I added the moustache and the arms in yellow.

BA1a: Character Design | Week 4

I was not very enthusiastic with character design, but after this first class I can say that I am starting to enjoyed. It was very funny and interesting. I enjoyed a lot making the tasks and it is very exciting to start creating a character. However, I still have some doubts about my character and I don't know if I am going to make another character. 

BA1a: Character Design | Homework 1

For homework we had to change something in our character and that could be the colour, the gender, the proportions. 

BA1a: Character Design

The first class of character design was funny and exciting with some interesting exercises. The first one we had to draw characters in the blots. After that we choose our favourite one and developed, drawing the character form and changing some aspects. Then Jon projected all our drawings and we had to draw each one in two minutes and the result of the draws of all the characters was very funny.