Final Character Designs

I've posted all of my sketch work and gotten that out of the way. Here are the final character designs for my project:

 First up the tortoise. I wanted to make him look young and a pretty happy looking character.
He is easily the most fun to draw, mostly because of his head.

I wish I was just drawing a bunch of turtles instead.

The next character we have here is the hare. He will be racing against the turtle, although he doesn't exactly want to. I like the design I made for this, however from the side view at the bottom, it looks a little skinny and awkward, so I'll remember to avoid drawing the character from that angle as much as possible in the final animation.

Don't you love my inventive names for these characters?

This character is the sheep that is supposed to be entering the race against the tortoise, but he is afraid of losing and asks the hare to take his place.

Look at me! I'm the antagonist!

This is the hare dressed as the sheep. While designing this, it was important to keep it looking very similar to the sheep, so the disguise is convincing, but also, it needed to look different enough so that if the two characters appear on screen at the same time, you can easily tell which is which. If you're wondering how the hare's limbs change color to match the sheep's, it's because he wears something over them.

That's how I fit The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing into all this.

 

 

 

Now finally here we have a dog. Yes, I replaced the wolf with a dog. It's a similar enough animal, hopefully. Originally, the wolf was going to be entering in the race and trying to catch the hare (dressed as the sheep) the entire time. The problem here was I would have too much going on at once, and I also wanted the wolf to win the race. It was making less and less sense as I went on.
This dog was created so that there would still be the same amount of characters. 3 race participants instead of just the tortoise and the hare. The dog wins the race as a result of the sheep's intentions backfiring. I wanted the character of the dog to look like an unlikely candidate for the winner so this is what I came up with:

Isn't he just precious? ...or maybe just stupid.

 

 

 

 

This was also a fun character to draw. Much better than anything I would have come up with for the wolf. I think this goofy looking character will get some laughs, especially when it wins the race. in the end.

This concludes my showcase of character sketches and designs so far. Right now I'm working on getting some turnarounds done, and then after that storyboards, backgrounds, the animatic, and then the final animation itself.

Wow, is this going by fast...

Second Batch Of Sketches

Gather 'round, children. Today I will be sharing with you another set of sketches. These ones were made after I finally decided on my story and knew what the characters would be.

The hare, very close to the final design.

The tortoise, also very close to the final design, the only real question I had for myself was how the legs would look.

Funny story about the wolf, I ended up not having one at all...

The sheep on the left is pretty much the same as the final design, but the hare here is very different. I actually gave the hare Ugly Bunny's ears. On the right is the hare wearing the sheep's clothes.

More tortoise ideas. Like I said before, it was very fun to draw.

As you can see, there actually weren't a lot of refinements in my designs, many of them are very close to the final designs I decided on. The one big change is that I ended up not using a wolf in my story at all. When I upload the final character designs, I'll explain why.

Initial Sketches

The first sketches for my final project were all over the place, including having the characters be human, robots, switching roles, or entirely different animals. 

This was before I had decided on which of the Aesop's Fables I am doing.

This was the first tortoise I drew, and it was so much fun to draw I knew I had to use something similar for the final design.

The hare is quite obnoxious here.

The tortoise and hare as humans.

From the beginning I was sure I had to make fun of the morals of the story.

The wolf as a woman wearing sheep's clothing.

This would've been interesting, but not fun to draw all the time

The note to myself says that this scenario would be harder to do with no dialogue.

The wolf running a sheep's clothing store

Yes, that is indeed a duck wearing a cat

While sketching I had a feeling that I would end up combining the two stories since I was having so much fun drawing both. A discussion in class came to the same conclusion, and there we have it. That's how my final began.

Explanation Of My Final Project

For my final project, I am going to combine two Aesop's Fables, The Tortoise and the Hare, and The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing.
I came to the decision to do this after being unable to decide between the two and wanting to give myself the challenge of putting these two unrelated stories together seamlessly.
The story that I made from the two involves the Tortoise racing both the Wolf and the Hare disguised as the Sheep. Meanwhile the Sheep, whom I made the antagonist, tries to lay traps for the Tortoise to stumble upon on the race track.
My aim is to tell the story in this animation without the use of dialogue. After finishing the writing of this story I realized this may seem reminiscent of old Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
So why not go with it?
Maybe I can plan this out to have the sort of humor found in those cartoons. I have yet to make out the storyboard, so we will see how far I can take this.

Summer Animations

I kept myself busy this summer by making two new animations.

The first is a piece involving sound.
This was a concept I had wanted to execute all semester but never had the chance to. I didn't think it would fit the requirements of any full assignment I had the past semester.

In my second animation of the summer, I returned to my usual antics and brought back my Alien characters for a short involving clouds.

I had one more animation planned during the summer, but it was never completed. I wanted to start a series involving a character called Ugly Bunny. I wanted to see if I could keep up a series on my own...and as it turns out, I didn't have the motivation to. Here's a little sample of what could have been:

And now that I've archived what I did this summer, I can look forward to this semester and planning my senior project.
More posts to come shortly.

Everyone Else Was Doing It...

I have returned!
And I need to start making regular updates on this blog even though I really don't use this for a class anymore. To start I have made changes so my blog looks pretty now.

I will be making other posts soon to explain my senior final project and show off any work that I have done for it so far. I need to get to planning what I need to display on this blog and also planning other work for deadlines.

What I Have Been Up To This Summer

I've been away for a while working on a job.
It's done now, but it made me realize I need to update my software because there was something I couldn't do exactly as needed.
I worked for a band known as The Adam Hofmann Revival, making an advertisement for their latest album, the profits of which go to survivors of human trafficking. In exchange they are going to add some music over some of my already existing animations.

The experience with this job has helped me decide on what to do for my senior project.
With projects, I usually like either having total freedom to do what I want, or have to follow a guide as closely as possible. This job was a weird in-between where I had to make something based on loose instructions. I could get creative, but was a little afraid to take it too far.

For my senior project I will be doing an adaptation of an already existing story. This will be something similar, where I can get creative, but also have to have the animation still be recognizable as that story. I think that will be good for me to do, and I'm excited to see what I'll come up with.
I haven't actually decided on which story to adapt. But I still have time to figure that out.

Meanwhile, to keep myself busy, I am working on 2 other animations.
One with my alien characters, and one with a new character called Ugly Bunny.
More info about this on the MCA Character Blog.

And that's about all for this update.
I will post animations here when they are finished and uploaded to Youtube.