I’ve been working extensively in my sketchbook and for the past couple of weeks have not really shown it. But here are some snapshots of my sketchbook:

This is what I basically started out with:

And this is where I’m going:

That rough turn around is what I’ve been showing as basically my locked in design. I’m pretty happy with the shapes and silhouette. I went around and asked a few people these three questions:

1. Does the silhouette of the figure have good movement?/Do you like the silhouette of the character?
2. What do you feel could help strengthen the shape and feel of the character?
3. What do you think about the hairstyle?

Everyone seems to enjoy the basic silhouette of the figure, the main comment I received was the over-all symmetry of her arms. The exaggerated curves were a bit too exaggerated. I can see what they mean and I do think it would be nice to take away a little volume from her upper arms and just a little from her forearms. As one of my teacher’s commented, she seems to have too large of forearms.

And while most do enjoy her hairstyle, the same teacher made a point that has changed my mind about her hairstyle. The style I chose will almost be like another object to animate. It’ll be doing a lot of bouncing, swinging and rolling around, more work than I have time for so I’m thinking about changing the hair style. He also told me to figure out her shoes and hands a bit more, which I plan to do.

Everyone I talked to likes the curves (especially her butt) and her facial expression so I think all I need to do is just play with arms, shoes and hands a bit.

We were talking about making like an exaggerated curl at the top of her head like sketched out above with a bun in the back. So it’s less dangling but will still provide movement and an exaggeration to her body.

Some quick sketches of other hairstyles I could possibly use. I honestly still love the large swirly curl, I just think it’ll be too much to animate and make look good in such little time.

Production week 1:
-Final character turnaround complete (along with smaller, quicker turnarounds for the children she’ll be walking by)
- Story board and (hopefully) animatic done.
-Environments drawn.

Production week 2:
-Key poses/rough pass of the animation.
-Environments completed and put into Harmony.

Production week 3:
- Be in the process of  in-betweening/clean up of animation.

Production week 4:
-Cleaned up animation complete
-In the process of coloring/touch ups

Production week 5:
-Cleaned polished animation of two scenes from a larger story. The two beginning scenes where she is sitting at the vanity getting ready, walking out into the busy streets where a bunch of kids are trick-or-treating and ends with her reaching the front doors and pushing them open.

I’m also hoping to complete some concept art or so along the way but that’s just something I’d like to do on the side.

Advertisement