I was asked to work on Nat and Kat's project doing the concept art work for the four characters that they had - Sarafina, Emo guy, Money Grabbers and the It Girls.

Sarafinas design was already strong in Nats mind so there wasn't artistic license allowed there, only to refine and provide turn arounds.

The other three characters were largely left to be designed. I was given a rough sketch for each of them by Kat so i knew the general direction to go in.

Below are the concepts for all the characters:


Sarafina

From the sketches that Nat gave me intially, i constructed a turn around straight away. The girl turned out too realistic for the style they were going for. So i therefore did some subtle variations on Sarafina for Nat to choose which she liked best:

I presented these to Nat to see which she like best. She liked the left hand Sarafina on the second page. I was to do a turn around for this one:

Throughout the project, i was asked to aid in aspects of the drawing of the characters, due to the complexness of their construction. I therefore broke down the construction of Sarafina into simple shapes and patterns which would aid in keeping the character consistent throughout the piece and making it easier to draw her turning in space. One such break down can be seen below:

Emo Guy

I first began sketching the familiar sight of "Emo" guys, with tight tops and skinny jeans and hair over the faces. Quite moody.

I began trying to incoporate a stylistic element into the designs. The hunched shouldered figure grew quite rapidly from this. Quite ominous i thought.

These head designs whilst liked by Nat, they wanted the visible eye to be more like the eye that Kat had concepted out for them. I bore this in mind when i continued designing.

I like the one on the right.

I like the low-trouser-high-underpants look...

Whilst the head and body turn arounds as seen above were appreciated by this character, Kat asked me to draw him again, but in a sat down position as the character neevr actually stands.

The character on the right sat down was the one which i liked and which Kat also liked.

Money Grabbers

I decided to try a different approach to the character designs, instead of trying to find a style from the drawings and shapes which crop, i thought i would try and start of with stylistic shapes in silhoutte form first and see if i could find the right mood for the character this way...

I like the stylised hands in this. This picture even at this early stage actually wasn't too far from the end design.

I thought i would entertain the idea of a slightly more cartoony evil guy, though i knew i would have to pull it back as this wasn't the tone of their piece...

I liked this - done with pencil and watercolour wash.

The cartoonyness did lend itself to creating quite angular character, which i liked and which the girls seemed to like too, the hands were a bit iffy tho...

Some head designs, many of which i liked but which, again, i seemed to like the very first one i did the most.

Here are the finalisations for the money grabber. Some body shape subtlties were considered.

These turn arounds were accompanied by simple construction shapes for the character. He was basically made up of a circle on a rectangle. I think this is why i liked the character so much, as this same formula was used for the head - cranium (circle) on the jaw (rectangle)...

Whilst animating, Kat did require me to get a specific angle (over the shoulder, slightly high angle). I roughed this out below:

IT Girls

The IT girls were supposed to be really beautiful so immediately i thought of curves, the visual representation of female beauty. I thought it best if i went back to a bit of figure drawing as i hadnt done it for a while and it would be best to get back to basics as this character would require it.

I began trying to simplify the curves of the forms to get a more graceful style

I went back to the stylstic sillhoutte approach i used when designing the money grabbers. When i thought of It Girl i thought, ultra thina dn fake, plastic boobs which are notoriously pointier than normal boobs.

Whilst Nat and Kat liked the style, they wanted a more fleshed out body, they were too stylised.

These were my favourites. I think i pinned the style in terms of curves and fluidity and fleshiness. This was reinforced by the girls like for the characters, though they liked the third from the left most but with shorter hair. I bega working on the turnarounds now. These were more complex characters so when i was finalising the designs, i was trying to consciously think about the shapes that were making up the form so i could detail this when showing the girls how to draw them.





Final turnaround for It Girls

Throughout the animation process they would ask me for help in detailing specifics about the characters and their movements and clarifying details about their designs which i was happy to do.