Fun with Character Design 101: Phase 2

Welcome back to our next installment of "Character Design 101"!  Last session we ended up with a pretty cool looking space bunny with spikes at the ends of his ears and a high-tech robo-suit named, for the time being, "Attila the Bun".

Now that we've created a pretty solid rough design for the character, It's time to go in there and polish the design up.  What we'll be doing is making a basic model that we can use to derive most of our animation poses from, as well as color to come up with a appealing palette for the character. 

Where last time we were focused on designing something that looked cool, this time we're going to try and ensure our character is properly constructed.

For anyone that has taken life drawing classes and felt it a waste of time, this is where your learning pays off.  Proper anatomic construction will help your character read well and make him/her/it easier to animate.

I'll be the first to point out the construction problems in this guy (the rear leg is out of perspective, the claw on the right hand is flipped, and his right arm is popping out of the shoulder socket) but all-in all, it's an pretty solid version of our rough, and can easily be tweaked in the next step.

Like I said above, there could have been some better construction choices made in hindsight.  A good way to prevent you character from ending up malformed is to break them up into their basic shapes and work with them. As requested by Beebles from the last segment, let's break this guy into his most basic Components and see what make him tick.

Here we have Attila the Bun in his most basic geometric parts.  This is also where you can see where he really falls apart...down in his legs it's all a mess.  I forgot to make some important decisions and it ended up in a sloppy "below the belt" region.  Luckilly he's a minor character and we can chalk this up to experience    As for future characters I'll have to be more careful with the construction process...sometimes you get so excited to see your work in it's final form that you get a bit sloppy in some parts.

Now, the design finalization stage doesn't have to be all rigid construction and boring anatomy correctness.  As with any creation process, the goal is to have fun with your work.  This guy was actually becoming a bit of a chore for me up until my coworker Jake came by and dropped his two sense on me...

Jake:  Hey Scott!  Nice Robot Cat you have there.

Scott (Me): Hmm, he's actually a bunny..but thanks regardless.

Jake: Oh, yeah, I see his ears now...they actually look kinda like boobs.

Scott: What?! (Looks down and Realizes the Ears with the Spikes look like saggy boobs) Oh crap.

Jake: It's cool...It'll be sweet to see this guys arms shoot out, he's going to kick some butt.

Half of the fun design is to see what other people see in your creation. I didn't see a cat, I sure didn't intend for his ears to look like boobs (you'll note that I shortened them up for that reason), and I really didn't intend for him to be able to shoot his robot arms out as weapons...

But that got me thinking...what if Attila's hands didn't go all the way inside the robot gloves, like so...

My mind started racing, and suddenly my character got a whole lot cooler.  Perhaps he could pull his real arms out and have full control of the big robot arms.  He could walks around on them (ala Dr.Octapus) for extra speed and height....

What it comes down to is that, sometimes, the most important or coolest or exciting ideas can come from a fresh brain that hasn't been knee deep in the details. 

That's a big part of this set of journal entries...not just to show the behind the scenes creation process of making a new character, but also to get some fresh input! 

So feel free time comment and make suggestions...when you're cookin' alone, you tend to eagerly welcome other cooks to the kitchen 

Next time: Coloring the Character and Organizing for Flash Animation.