Week Two; Character Design

This week we looked at character orientated animations.
How characters are designed to create a persona around its desired personality.
This can be achieved by the look of a character, how it moves, how it sounds , etc.

Here are a few examples we looked at during the lesson.
Alan

The personality of Alan is conveyed through its scruffy, messy, hard edged illustration. Also using fewer frames and less body movements gives the impression he walks sluggish and angry.
Other aspects include his voice and little conversation, conveying him as a rude character and typically anti social.

Another anti social character we looked at was Drive By Abuser.
Drive By Abuser
The character is mainly portrayed in this light, by the voice, the swearing, the aggressive nature to bother people 'feeding the ducks' minding their own business, and along comes this character, angry at life, and abusing anyone in his path.
So how is this comical? Well, of course, it's a bloody big panda riding around on a scooter with a frigging megaphone. Very simple but effective!

Another good example of characters is from the creature comforts episodes.
Creature Comforts
In this clip there are many personalities conveyed.
The first scene of the mice; look at their posture and gestures, the use of language and voice.
Second is the pets, the dim female dog, and her geeky smile, and the lazy cat. How do we know he's lazy, his belly? Slow speech? Even down to the slow movement in his eyes. Watch closely.
Lastly, the two police dogs. I think its clear who is the good cop, bad cop.
The good cop is clean, cute, small, timid looking, again voice and choice of vocabulary, his colouring and fluffy fur.
And the bad cop, well, I think that is distinctively obvious. He has characteristics similar to that of Alan, the first animation we looked at.