Character template: Willie Billiams 23/01/08

Character development and initial modelling 23/01/08

pocahontas design 22/01/08

Ah done! here are a few images i drew to get a feel for Pocahontas. Its cause i saw that image of yours kanika and thought it worked really well.

had a little go of drawing expressions... and discovered that character design is not my strongest asset lol

Basic schedule plan 15/01/08

Hey JEFFY!!! erm ok I have done a basic schedule however I think we will have to tweak it a bit, here's what I have anyway

Week 1: Research and initial ideas
Week 2: Research and initial ideas
Week 3: Design development and finalisation (at the beginning of the week) and modelling towards the middle and the end of the week
Week 4: FORMATIVE, Modelling
Week 5: Modelling and rigging
Week 6: Rigging and weighting
Week 7: Weighting and animation
Week 8: Animation and rendering
Week 9: premiere and after effects

Now personally I think if we do go with this schedule we will might have a few problems!!! if there is anyway you think we can make it better because I feel this schedule doesn't really leave much room for error!

Few Sketches 15/01/08

Here are a few quick sketches to get a feel for it. I like the ones you've put on so far Kanika!

I'm thinking maybe we can go really simple like 'purple and Brown'?

I try and Draw some simple faces etc... I went straight for the gorilla to see how we cold do that but tbh its harder than i thought.

I think maybe we could a couple of sketches? Because it sounds like you're beginning to enjoy the creepy crawly one? lol

Perhaps we could just animate them on their own doing what they would usually do if no-one was around or what ever? up to you.

Further Research and Inital Sketches 14/01/08

I decided to do some further research on Scenario 1 and 5, just collecting some pictures that would help us develop some inital character ideas and designs. I took a couple of books out from the LRC, Gorillas in the mist and The world of insects.

The Insect book helped in showing the immense detail that is in these creatures, the colouring the patterns, all the different shapes and sizes. I believe we could have alot of fun with designing a creepy crawly character that would interact with the 9yr old boy, and there are alot to choose from.

These pictures I got from the Gorillas in the mist book. Three pictures in particular caught my eye, the last to pictures shown above clearly have a huge contrast. Its like the personality of the gorilla is instantly told by the one shot. The first picture is of a playful gorilla swinging at the top of a tree, you can tell is innocent care free and probably quite friendly. The second picture is very different. The gorilla seems very serious, like he is not one to mess with! He looks like he could loose his temper very quickly and takes a leading role in whatever he does. The last picture is a little bit like the first except this gorilla looks quite shy but curious.

When I thought of Gorillas one of the first films that popped into my head was Disney's Tarzan. This is a great example of animated gorillas. I watched the film and it gave me a great incite to how you can portray human emotions and the characteristics of a gorilla and combine them together.

I found this picture on the Internet, I thought if we did end up creating a gorilla this diagram of the bones would help with the joints that we would need to use.

Sorry about the quality of this scan its quite bad! Here are some quick sketches that I started to do concerning scenario 1, I was looking at Willie Billiams in particular. I took what me and Jeff had said about what our initial thoughts on the character would be like and elaborated.

I started to think about not nessacerly making the character English; one of my initial designs I drew it with the intent of a sterotypical hillbilly with a slow southeren accent who was on holiday with his family. However I think it would be a more succesful piece if the character was English, and I like what Jeff had said about maybe the character having a lisp!

Initial Ideas Con't 14/01/08

I've been trying to come up with a few initial ideas of the characters themselves and giving a few characteristics to them which I feel are lovable.
Let me know how you see these characters working together.

Willie- hyperactive 9 year old, obsessive interest in creepy crawlies. I really feel the need to go all out and make this family geeky! Have him carry a maginfy glass with him all the time, always investigating under rocks etc.. for creepy crawlies and perhaps talks with a lisp?

Pocahontas- This character is really inspired by the lil girl from 'monsters inc'. So i have to be careful not to copy it too much, hopefully with the influences from Aardman etc.. she would look pretty diff. I think for this character we should really play on the fact she wants to be a gorilla. Whats her reason for her to be at the zoo?? Well i can imagine this girl wants to live as a gorilla so her main aim is to somehow get into the cage and live like one and hope her grandmother forgets that she came along. However, I really like the cornelius char (gorilla), who is the most civilised of the animals at the zoo, and is completely different to what pocahontas has ever read about gorillas and shes completely bemused and somewhat disheartened. Anyhoo, the gorilla uses the girl as a chance to escape the zoo. His reason being that he can now leave the zoo by replacing himself with the girl who is dressed up as a gorilla.

Cornelius- Far too itelligent for his own good. He is also far too 'british' to be for the entertainment of visitors at the zoo. His cage is full of books and other intelligent things. Hes considered himself more human than humans themselves and desires nothing more than to escape the zoo and live as a human in the 'real and civilised world'. He finds himself far too eloquent for life in a zoo.

grandmother- Make her very old and fragile. Big thick glasses which don't even work, constantly forgetting stuff e.g. why she is at the zoo and who she's even with. Often finds herself in conversation with random objects such as plants and animals believing them to be people. I wasn't too sure how to maek use of the 'she thinks everything smells bad' criteria so if you have an ideas that could work?

Wee Eck McGlone- He's got to have a massive ginger beard! and also a kilt! Done. lol always carries his broom around with and sweeps constantly. Is more likely to be confused as a ginger ape as his human interaction is dreadful. His sentences consist are very few words and even them are hard to udnerstand with a strong scottish accent.


Any hoo, this is just inital ideaas without putting them on paper yet so i'm abotu to do that and try n come u pwith a couple of character designs as i've detailed here a bit.