LAUAN601-Final Character Designs

The Process of the Character Designs

For my short animation the original character designer was Rhys Davies. I had created a timetable for the pre-production side of the film to ensure that the pre-production would be done in time:

First Draft of Pre-production Plan 

Rhys did not manage to hit the original date for character designs to be completed by however, I gave him another date and he started to improve by showing me some of the rough designs that he had come up with. These were the rough designs for the characters of the ‘Little Boy’ and Grandma’s character:

Designed by Rhys Davis 

Designed by Rhys Davis 

As part of my weeklies I decided to show these designs for some feedback from my peers as I was unsure whether this character design was effective for my storyline. The feedback I got from my peers was:

• The Little Boy’s build is too manly:

-       Change the body shape

-       Character needs to be shorter

-       Maybe even try a bigger head and smaller body to         make the character more childlike

• Needs something in common with the monster:

-       Could change the Little Boy’s skin to match the robots

-       Maybe the Little Boy could have one eye like the monster

-       Lastly, the Little Boy could have a toy robot in the Reality World that becomes life-like in the Mystical World.

• Grandmas needs a common theme atheistically to relate to the boy.

• As the boy is dressed from the era of the 1940s then so does Grandma.

After I received the feedback, I had a discussion with Rhys about the changes that needed to be made to the character designs as well as, the dates these needed to be done by. Unfortunately, I did not receive any more completed designs or rough designs to look at for a couple of weeks. At this point, as the director, I had to consider a back-up plan. After talking to Dotty in a 1:1 conversation I came to the conclusion that I had to start putting my foot down. I did this by contacting Rhys and asking him to have the completed designs to me in a week and that was his final deadline. When I did not receive completed designs, furthermore, the designs that he did do did not follow the changes that I wanted to make based on the feedback given by our peers, I put the back-up plan into action.

My back-up plan consisted of taking away one-character design off of Rhys so he only had two to focus on in the hope that it would speed up the process. I had asked Eloise Wayling to complete the ‘Monster’ character design for me:

Designed by Eloise Wayling 

The concept of the Monster designed by Rhys Davis:

Designed by Rhys Davis 

I was very happy with the end result of the character design, as it followed the guidelines of how I wanted my Monster to appear. As well as, going as far as to give me a completed final turnaround:

After Eloise being able to complete this design after a week, Rhys had still not completed any of the two-character designs he took control of. What I could have done better in this situation is my communication with Rhys could have been more productive when explaining the final deadlines and when he did not meet them, why this was frustrating to me. I decided to give the last two final designs to Briony Caswell. I was two weeks behind and did not know what else to do. I finally got around to talking to Rhys about these final decisions and we came to an agreement that I would still use his designs as my concepts for the character designs in my ‘Art of Book for: The Portal’.

These are the final designs for the Little Boy’s and Grandma’s characters:

Designed by Briony Caswell 

Designed by Briony Caswell