Saturday, 14 February 2015

Character Design: Pigs In Tutus

Our first official assignment as part of the Exploring Practice in Animation module was two design two characters, with complete free reign apart from one caveat: they have to be able to perform lip sync. My first thought was an ironic response to a comment our tutor made to drive home the point of an abstract animation assignment being, well, abstract: "I don't want no pigs in tutus, only stuff that moves." Well, thanks to that assignment I now have the raw animation skills to draw pigs in tutus to my heart's content!

I liked the humorous contrast of such heavy, clumsy creatures doing ballet - but as I noted at the time, I was worried my classmates would draw this connection and I wouldn't come off as very original, so I developed a few backup ideas...

...like this modern-day, all-female adaptation of The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse, but I wasn't quite as excited by the idea of adapting an old story as I was by the prospect of doing something completely my own.

I tossed more things at the wall to see what would stick: an elephant seal selkie (for fun more than the assignment), a Chihuahua and flea duo (again, inspired by a comment my tutor made: "the characters have to be able to interact with each other, so don't do a giant and a flea"), and a crocodile inspired by this Yahoo Answers question that gained memetic status. I thought all of them at least had potential, but then, a pun for the title of the ballerina pigs' story popped into my head...

...and I realised it would be a waste of that pun to develop any other idea, so I got stuck in like... well, a pig in muck.





Sadly for these two, we got another different assignment later in the semester: to storyboard a 15-20-second action sequence, and the physical comedy I had in mind for Swine Lake didn't fit the bill, so I decided to use a different set of characters for the storyboard assignment. The experience matched what I know about the development of animated features: that entire plot points, characters and even films can get canned before starting full-on production, and it was a good reminder not to invest too much time or energy into a project before settling on it for sure. At least with these sketches, I can always go back to these characters when I'm not so busy!

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