Dialogue- character design- continued

I worked on the designs a little bit more.

Here is the version which is almost final, and some sketches of the character's body and anatomical details

Here I finally got his face right. This is the design I'm going to use- I think it looks a little complicated, but I feel comfortable working with it, I find it easy to operate with and the forms in it are connected in a way that should make them easier to draw from different angles.

This is the final design for the old man and the boy:

Dialogue- character design

In my sound file there are two characters; I am still working on the design for the old man, the design of the boy might change slightly, too. These are the sketches I've done so far.

First, I was trying to figure out what idea I'm going to use for this piece. I tried to come up with something different than normal human characters, to have something to compare and choose from. I considered portraying the characters as bears, dragons or, well, sheep.

I liked the dragons version the most, but finally I decided that human characters will be the best option, since they won't distract the viewer from the actual dialogue with the unusual setting and unexpected fantasy situation. Below are the sketches I did of the human characters.

The one on the left is the first design of the old man I like and actually, the one I like the most so far; I would love to use it as it is here, but I will have to make sure he won't be too difficult to animate.

In the middle there are first sketches of the kid- I think he can be relatively generic as long as he is cute and has the right proportions for the age his voice indicates, since the main character in the dialogue seems to be the old man and he should get the most of the viewer's attention.

On the right there are just some rough thumbnails of the scene composition and a quick sketch of part of the animation I wanted to note somewhere.

These are just some sketches of the old man's head, to figure out the best shapes and proportions to make him easy and comfortable to animate

This is the last sketch I did for the old man; I still want to work on him a little, though.

This is what could be the final design for the kid:

I found it quite difficult to make the old man look the way I think he should- to reflect his personality and look appealing, and still be relatively easy to animate.

Caricaturing exercise- character design

first picture is the first set of rough ideas I sketched to help me get a clearer picture of what kind of design I should look for

second page also contains some random characters I sketched searching for some appealing types, but here I finally managed to come up with a type of character I found interesting; I tried to keep some of the more interesting features found in the original real-life model, but I also wanted to keep the 3D volumes and shapes as simple as possible to make the character easy to animate; I think this design is quite successful in combining those two basic characteristics

third page is just few more sketches I did to get familiar with the character and his form

character's hair in some drawings is reversed; that's because since it's not some elaborate narrative, I decided his hair position can be decided depending on the character's position and camera view in the final animation, to make the perspective and rotating of head easier when animating.

First year works- 2nd semester- Cowboys

The short animation I made on my second semester of the first year of animation course

concept art- character desing:

This is the first interesting idea I got for the characters, which still needed work to make characters more appealing and easier to animate, but gave me some starting point for visual development:

some rough sketches, looking for interesting visuals and personality:

the last sketch on this page was the one I used in the final animation:

some sketches to get to know the character before animating him:

These are some sketches of the other cowboy, his design almost didn't change since I got the main idea, I just made him shorter and less lanky, and more crazy and dynamic:

Rough sketch of the town; I altered the houses slightly in the actual animation, but these helped me to get the picture of the town in general:

final animation:

I must admit I'm not very pleased with the final product, but there are still parts of it I really like, like the animation of shorter cowboy in the last scene, or the tumbleweed with the University's logo in it.

First year works- 1st semester

These are few examples of the work I did on my first semester of the first year of animation course.

-character design

-layout and background design

-animation: the assignment was to animate a cat being frightened by a ball falling from the stairs

-the assignment was to create animated sequence for any 8 second piece of music

you can see the upside-down version below:

(music: Enya, Fairytale)

-assignment was to animate a character throwing a small object:

it's not very good animation, but I uploaded it for comparison to my newer throw animation done on my second year- http://apcourseworks.blogspot.com/2010/03/body-mechanics-animations.html