First Entry : Character research

So the first entry ever for me!!! Ha ha ha.

Okay I may want to explain some things like the purpose of this. I am an Advance Diploma Animation student at the Central Institute of Technology. This blog is to show the processes that I go through from the start (research and design) to the end (final production).

So what am I exactly doing? Well as part of our final year we are to make a short animation. Yes, it’s exciting. At the moment I am only in the research process though. I have being currently looking into animation. Stuff like how it looks and made, what makes one good to the other, character development, and the story of how something is told. It’s all part of my first process of figuring out what I want to do and what I want it to look like.

Character Research: The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Characters are a really big element in any kind of animation and that is what I have being looking at recently. I want to start developing an idea for a character first. This always gives me an idea of what kind of story I will tell. Characters have an effect on their environment so it’s a good way for me to figure out where they live and what kind of back story they have (yes I love back stories).

First I have looked at a bunch of different animation shorts and movies (research only *cough* *cough*). Looking at how they develop the character, show the expression and how the appearance of the character reflects their personality (mainly looking at 3d).

 I recently watched the movie The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. It was a very pretty movie visually with owls as characters (very pretty owls). Soren is the main character a young barn owl that gets kidnapped along with his brother by evil owls that are trying to defeat the guardians. A good comparison is between the brothers Soren and Kludd, since in the movie they both go separate ways, a good Vs evil scenario.

Soren is the hero he flies over great distances with his group to find the guardians. While Kludd hands over their sister to the evil group (the Pure Ones) in a bid to get acceptance from the group. You can see the obvious differences in them and they way they look. Now it’s not because of genetics it’s because of design. 

Soren is happy a lot more open eyed. he looks friendly and his feather soft and clean. He looks approachable while Kludd on the other hand is the opposite. His eyes are very harsh looking. He has a punk like mohawk and dirty and unmanaged feathers. He also has dye on his face that looks like scaring, making him looked disfigured.

Kludd

Soren

The differences in these characters make you have different feelings toward them. Opening the eyes of a character makes you feel more attached to them. They look cute and cuddly. While having character that have smaller eyes makes you feel detached from them. Expression through they eyes are going to be the key to making my character so I have to focus on what the eyes are doing along with what their actions are.

The movie itself is inkling me into doing a animal animation  since I am a big animal lover. But what kind of animal do I want and how will it look?? I will need to start looking into some more animation films, maybe Rio. To get the idea of an animal character and how they describe them, what is the correct amount of exaggeration, look at their animated and real life counter parts. Creativity juices are following. 

Over and out 

Animatornerd