Character Design through time -- Heffner the Drama Llama

A fun little character design exercise involving my drama llama character, Heffner. I tried to keep a pretty consistent color palette (mostly red with some blue and yellow) and tried to keep in mind his position as a "background" character. In order:

1. Original 2. Circus Clown circa 1910 3. Cave Llama 4. Wild West Outlaw Member 5. 1960's Hippie (circa Woodstock) 6. Ancient Greek Philosopher (he does like to talk a lot) 7. 70's Punk Rocker 8. Star Trek Red Shirt 9. Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Builder 10. 50's Housewife

Expressions

Exploring expressions for my character, Yvonne!

I took 5 different expressions and tried to show them 5 different ways.

Character Swap -- Drama Llama

We swapped character descriptions in class, and I got to pair up with the always awesome Cameron McClain. I had a lot of fun with this assignment!

Hefner the drama llama is a recurring background character. He's skinny, derpy, clumsy, and the epitome of an untrustworthy gossip -- don't tell him anything that you don't want EVERYONE else to know too!

Group Project -- "Spellbound"

Some work I did for a group project for character design. I ended up designing the main character -- a precocious young girl in a rural farming village who learns she can do real magic after a con-artist hack magician passes through her town.

Some exploratory sketches and silhouettes:

The final design and some exploration of her character. I imagine her to be pretty spunky and independent character who doesn't like to be told what to do.

Then I did the layout for one of the beatboards, illustrating Hazel showing her best friend, Louise, her new found skill. The very awesome Michelle Rakar ended up cleaning up and coloring!

Some environment studies that I did:

Life Drawing HW -- Ben Lane talk

Ben Lane, a CCAD alum and story artist at Disney, took some time last week to talk to us via Skype! I also did a little sketching in between note taking.

Lifedrawing HW -- CCAD

Still sketching people in class. I pay attention, I swear.

Line Quality Exercise

Experimenting with line quality featuring my thesis character, James!

Halloween Sketching!

Went to a Halloween party thing at one of my favorite bars and did some sketching. A mix of people actually in costume and 'monster-fying' other bar patrons not in costume.

3D Sculpting!

We learned how to sculpt in Sculptris. I though Sculptris was a little frustrating though, so one of my wonderful friends taught me how to use ZBrush instead. I modeled one of my cactus ladies from my thesis film!

It was super hard, but I think it turned out alright for my first try in ZBrush!

Hero, Villain, Comic

We had to design a hero, a villain, and a comic type character for a story/genre of our choosing. My story is a space adventure odyssey about the exiled prince from the Kingdom of Rock and Roll, Johnny Two-Strings, and his quest to defeat the intergalactic reining Pop Princess, Kandi Starr, and keep her from taking over the universe. Spoiler alert: Johnny Two-Strings and Kandi Starr end up reconciling their differences and making beautiful pop-punk music together (maybe once the semester is over I'll illustrate that). Throughout the story, Kandi Starr is accompanied by her long-suffering stage manager, Rodney Ulraith, who dreams of becoming an opera super star one day.

For Johnny Two-String's design, I looked at James Dean, Elvis, and Japanese gangsters for reference. Unfortunately, I lost all of my preliminary sketching and studies for this project because my hard drive died.

Kandi Starr is based on a mashup of Lady Gaga and Niki Minaj with a pinch of Toddlers in Tiaras and The Fifth Element.

I looked at a lot of centipede reference for Rodney Ulraith. Eeeeew.

The whole gang together!

I had an absolute blast with this project and these characters -- definitely something that I'd like to revisit in the future!