Idea 1- Character Designs

Because of the inclusion of the Life cycle Idea, I began to draw characters for each of the different stages of the life cycle. These include Baby, Child, Teenager, Adult, Middle Aged and Old Aged.

Some of these drawings have been inspired by cartoons and actual photographs of babies from the internet. I wanted to go for the obvious baby look of a baby in a nappy, and most of them don't have any hair at all.

The drawings of the children are inspired again by pictures from the internet, I tried to make use of the clothing to make the characters look like children such as stripy shirts and rockets.

In the teenager drawings i wanted to make them look like a stereotypical moody teenager, I also looked at the teenager possibly turning to jelly when falling in love with someone.

Coming to the designs of the adult, I had an image in mind of a strong man, a father figure, I was inspired by Stan Smith from 'American dad' therefore some of the drawings show a man in a suit.

 The middle aged man was almost the same as the adult however I tried to make the look a bit more obvious through the clothing and the obvious wrinkles.

I specifically want the old man to have an arched back and have no hair and possibly be wearing a dressing gown and walking with a stick or zimmaframe, I tried to get the typical 'grandad' outfit of a polo shirt and a cardigan or a smart shirt, and I also included glasses on some.

A bit more development needed, I want to work on these designs in Photoshop.

Idea 1- Alteration

Thinking about the original idea, I didn't think I could move on with a plot and therefore I combined this idea with another involving a life cycle. I still wanted to include the idea of the boy being made of glass. The idea circulates around the life cycle of a human or an animal or both. 

For each stage of the cycle such as baby-child-teenager-adult-middle aged-old aged the character would be shown in a specific way according the their character and the current stage of the life cycle. 

For example for a baby the character would be made of glass because a baby is seen as delicate and vulnerable, easy to 'break' and an adult would be made out of metal, as this is the point in which a human is in their prime or at their best. Overall the idea would be shown through a life cycle and how the characters would be made out of a different material/substance depending on the stage in the life cycle, this would alter depending on what is shown throughout the life.

I like the idea of also showing animals along with the human therefore different perspectives of the life cycle.

Looking back at a guest lecturer who visited UCA Grant Orchard, His film 'A morning stroll' involved repetition of the same thing but each time the film re ran time had moved on and in each re run the technique and medium changes, at first the animation was 2D and hand drawn and then finally the film is set in the future and a post apocalyptic setting with Zombies and is 3D CG animation. Grant explained that each time the animation changed it was basically made on the same timings and simply changed a little bit each time, the animatic like always would obviously be a massive help with a technique like this.

Idea 1

My first Idea consisted of a boy made of glass, his main goal in life was to avoid being smashed and therefore he would have to avoid all of the normal things in life which involve contact such as not being able to have friends, and when he ventures out he would have to wear bubble wrap as clothing.

 I wanted the character to have a basic shape, I have shown on this page how I would use simple shapes to draw the character.





Below I tried to explore a colour scheme for the  glass boy and I mentioned the type of character the boy is and that this is shown through his colour scheme

On this page I looked at different designs for the character ranging from glass bottles to stemmed glasses and different shapes, however I constantly found myself going back to the simple design as this was the type of look I had in my mind for the character.




Below shows more of the same 'simple' shape for the character and the bubble wrap clothing.

A few more drawings with the character in clothing, and more 'glass' designs, Again I kept rerouting back to the original design idea.

Summer Project

This new blog is for a new animation project to be submitted before christmas as part of my 2nd year at UCA.

The film must be at least 1 minute long and must be of broadcast quality.

Over the summer I must work of 5 ideas which must be fully developed ideas, mostly visual, interesting and original.

The ideas will then be professionally pitched within the first 5 weeks.

I can use any technique, basis or medium I want.

This unit allows me to use my imagination to make a film of my own from any genre, style I want to.