More on Project Cheese

Ah! Sooo busy!

So what is the state of my project so far?
Story boards-done
Background concepts and tests-done
Character concepts and designs-done
Test animations-done
Animatic-done
Pre-production bible-done
Me-exhausted.

Ok, I think I'm gonna elaborate over stuff now. Character design. Creating the general look of the character was rather interesting. The distinctive style of cartoon I had gone for meant the design needed to be simple but with a very defined silhouette and lots of charisma.

Here is an example of early experimentation

I ended up with this. As this Little guy was so easily expressive I stuck with the design. One of the most important assets any design could have, with a character that says so little, is one that can portray emotion through facial expression and physicality.

And here is a pretty final turnaround and set of expression tests just for the sake of it.

So once that was sorted I moved onto colouration. Bellow I experimented with three sets of colour: brown, grey and white-colours most people imagine mice to be. The brown was far too dark and the grey seemed to merge with the general colour scheme making it less defined. The white was clear and crisp and added as a subtle hint to his techie nature-a white lab coat was in mind.

The extra lines, used to separate the skin from fur, made the design all too complicated. The result was he looked lovely alone but became detached from the over all appeal of the cartoon. I liked it but it had to be cut.

Bellow you can see where I attempted to include flesh tones by just applying it to the tail (because it had a natural division line where it met his rear) but as the ears and nose were left white it looked unusual. In the end he was just white but I found it had a simple fresh appeal.

And this is the finalised design.

Anyway directing has been hard work but very enjoyable. I haven't really had the opportunity to implement an idea into film before so its been fantastic to finally do so. As well as character design I've been working on general concept design making sure that there is defined and cohesive imagery through out, story boarding with the group which involves many redrafts, building an animatic and hand drawn animation on the side.

So, rambling over, this blog was kinda long so I'll save some more for another.