Getting the character design is always a tough part of any film. We’ve been through the mill on this short already and have done quite a few versions:
This was the first design of Professor Orit that we settled on, drawn up by Derek Horan:
(click on all the images to enlarge them)
Was it just me or was Professor Orit looking a bit like this bloke?
I liked how these were looking but they were probably a bit too loose to go straight to 3D.
Here were a few more developed coloured up full body designs:
Based on these drawings we went to first draft grey scale of the models. Here is our first attempt at them:
So Professor Orit seemed like he was getting somewhere… then we turned our attention towards his young student.
These were the intial designs that we had originally submitted with the proposal:
Based on this character we did up some sketches to try to draw some form out of the character:
and from these sketches we tried to model the head:
I realised that we had sort of backed ourselves into a creative brick wall, as I thought the student’s head was just becoming a bit generic and didn’t really have much character. Looking back at the model of the Professor I also realised that they were starting to look like they were two different styles, and I wasn’t sure if either one of them suited the style of the backgrounds. So we made the difficult decision of throwing everything away and starting again from scratch to try to nail the characters.
I really like the work of Peter Donnelly from The Station and I’d worked with him before, so we gave him a shout to see if he would like to have a go at redesigning the characters. This is what he came up with:
I thought these were working really well. They weren’t a million miles away from what we previously had but I felt that they brought a lot more character. We immediately got to modelling on these designs, and these were the first draft models:
I like where these designs are headed, but we still need to do a bit of work on them. The shoes are a bit cartoony and we need to add detail to the clothes but I like where we’ve ended up.
There are still lots of things we need to figure out, like how are we going to do the hair? How do we treat the cloth? I’ll let you know how we get on!
6 comments so far
I think you made the right decision. I like the messy hair on the Professor. Though I think that might be an older version of him. I assume the hair will become particle based eventually. Good job!
21 June 2010
4:39 pm
Thanks Ken
Actually the designs will be changing even more from what we have here as I think we need to get back to the roundy nosed prof in the original 2D designs.
Figuring out how to do the hair will be a huge part in deciding where our resources go.
In Granny O’Grimm we realised that we just didn’t have the time to figure out how to do justice to Nickys design and make the hair work in the time & budget that we had so we figured out a way to do it using simple geometry which ultimately really suited the style.
Its all about bang for buck but right now we still need to figure it out… modelling or particles…. we’ll find out soon.
21 June 2010
4:54 pm
Looking good Doc, thank you for the nod. I think your decision to revert to the round nose on the Prof is the right one as it fits his overall design better. I think its important to keep that visual contrast between the two characters, the thin young guy and the older large professer, it will give the scenes much more appeal…just ask Stan Laurel! Keep up the great work.
22 June 2010
8:45 am
Thank you Peter for the great designs… I totally agree with you. Contrast is great & sometimes its easy to stray from the 2D when you get to the 3D modelling so its always important to go back to the original inspiration & remember what you liked about it. In a short film like this the material passes through so many hands that it is easy for things to stray & you always have to bring it back to that initial vision!
22 June 2010
8:59 am
Nice work there Doc- it certainly seems to have a strong diection. I’d avoid particles if i were you, haveing a few skinned texture cards with some nice shaders on the remainder of the hair wortks just as well as particless. Unless of course you having to”mess” the hair later, in which case maybe having a blendshape solution could be used.
Looking forward to this!
22 June 2010
4:48 pm
Thanks for the heads up on Particle issues Paschal. We will keep that in mind when we get to testing it!
23 June 2010
9:31 am