Character Design

I'm thinking of using a thin lanky character, because it'd be easier to animate in 3Ds Max, compared to the fiddliness of a large bulky character. Having long limbs would make movement alot easier and more pronounced in the animation. I think this will be a good effect as there is little dialogue in my film, concentrating more on body language. Hopefully having large eyes, heavy pronounced use of eyebrows and easily exaggerated long gangly limbs shall help conveying the message across to the audience.

Characters such as Basil Fawlty come into mind; his exaggerated, at times manic, body movements when he is irrate stand out in particular. He also has some pretty impressive facial features which may bear some influence.



Of course, my character isn't going to be human. This is to detract from reality in a way and as the character is going to be a generic lizard creature, retain a cartoony feel. This is also keeping to good old Tom and Jerry and Droopy Dog-esque characters; animals with human qualities. Anthropomorphism at it's best.


Here is a rough character design sheet showing front, side and 3/4 view as well as some expressions.

From this, I modelled the character out of plastercine, to get an idea of proportions and a physical form to refer to whilst modelling the character on Max. Here are some photos:

Using these as a guide, I have started to model my character, the plan is to spend time on modelling Axl then using the finished mesh, scaling it down and using it for the Baby. The baby is essentially Axl's mesh, scaled down and given some baby fat using abit of mesh alterations. Here's what I have so far :

Axl:

Baby: