Character Development

Over the weekend I was assigned the task of developing the initial character design produced by myself and Philly B. The others are all busy developing environment background designs. I tried to play around with the few concepts we liked from our original brainstorm session however I always seemed to develop back to the favourite first design! Below is a selection of my concepts showing my thought process and favoured styles...



Here I sketched various possible shapes for the torso and arms for my favoured design.



Above is a range of head sketches I produced in an attempt to develop the design me and phil agreed on (top left). Unfortunately I hit dead ends with most and again favoured the first!



Of my many head variations one look I stubled upon was the addition of an almost hoody style hat. After I drew it I realised it was very similar to Kenny from South Parks design. I scrapped the nose and mouth as I liked the idea of the hood being draw string pulled so tight it only revelaed the big puppy dog eyes. I liked the cutness of the design, however it wasn't bare bear for me, and would lack expression when it came to animation.



These 4 were a selection of my favourite designs and I felt were all unqiue in that they were totally different in size and shape. Top left is a square shaped bear which i felt would have been cool to incorporate the head in the body as one big square with limbs protruding. Bottom left is a fat grizzy bear design which I think would have worked well as an extra character, say a bear that bare bear met on his travels, but not for the main character. On the right and slightly larger is the favoured design again however I developed the head into more of a rugby ball shape, and curved the whole thing out if that makes sense?! I really liked this design as you instantly feel sorry for the character due to his weak stance and limp limbs. The middle design was me trying to throw together a combination of the square design and the rugby ball headed one. Didn't work as his face annoys me rather than persuades me to feel sorry for him! Jared agreed the rugby ball shaped design was the winner so far.