In this week's character design lesson, we started to look at body language and gestures to help emphasise personality in our characters and drawings. We were split into groups and each group was given a list of prompts. From this, one person from the group at a time would get up and pose for the rest of us to draw.
After this, we had to pick one of the prompts and make a quick character design based on the pose, with the option to redraw one of the poses we'd drawn earlier or to use a new one. I chose the rockstar prompt and took a photo of Shannon in the pose to help me.
In the afternoon, we started to focus on our projects again. I was feeling somewhat lost in regard to the design of the main character, so I revisited the 1940's vinyl toy dog design somewhat using the image I'd already looked at of it online. I started by doing a quick copy of the head before starting to look at various different things such as what type of ears he'd have or whether or not he'd be anthropomorphic as opposed to a 'regular' dog.
I also looked at different animation styles I could think of at the time, such as anthropomorphic dog designs from Treasure Planet, Bojack Horseman, and The Amazing World of Gumball in particular. Another thing I had to consider was the rest of the prompt; not only is the character a vinyl toy, but they're also "scared of weapons"; after speaking to Justin, we decided that the dog character would suit this trait (since dogs tend to be scared of loud noises like fireworks, so it'd make sense if the character hated weapons like guns because of the noise). He'd also be much more reluctant to wield a weapon for this reason.
Justin also suggested that maybe the character isn't the gangster, and that this is more suited to the villain character. As I've played with the idea of having the "big shoot-out" and "entering the room prompts" being that of gangsters raiding some sort of back-alley bar, the hero character could actually be someone working in the bar and defending themself and the other people - therefore he would be dressed less like a detective and more like whatever his job is (a barman, someone playing an instrument like a pianist, a waiter, etc.).
I also carried on looking at the 'femme-fatale'-type character. This time, I began to consider other aspects of the 1930's-40's in her design including that of a 'toonier' style while still trying to make it work with the vinyl toy/plastic prompt. This involved looking at older animation styles like those from around that time like early Mickey Mouse cartoons and Betty Boop. I also looked at newer media that utilises the rubber hose style like Steven Universe or Cuphead. For the toy aspect, I looked at characters from Toy Story (in particular, the older-styled toys from Toy Story 4).
I think it'd be appropriate if the character had a painted on face as well as a lot of dolls and toys from the 1930's-40's have this kind of look.
I will work on refining these designs so I can move on to designing the villain and set sometime soon.
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