Back to the drawing board

So after being initially happy with my design I changed my mind. I just didn't feel that she really stuck to the brief so I went back and re read the brief.

Pocahontas Billiams – “Willie’s  sister, she’s seven years old but much more relaxed and more knowing than her sibling. She wants to be a gorilla.”

I decided to keep some aspects of my original design but she still dramatically changed. 

The word "relaxed" was the what I focused on to create her character. What is relaxing? What could make her interesting a different? I then decided that for her to be relaxed she was going to smoke weed. Now I couldn't very well make a 7 year old girl smoke weed. To get around the legal issues of an under age child smoking weed I decided that it was OK because she was part Lemur and that seven in Lemur years is a a lot older than that of a human, so it was perfectly fine for her to smoke it.

I then begun my designs.

Initial Ideas

These are the sketches I did for my character. Originally I was quite happy with how she turned out.

At first I tried a simpler younger looking version, I had this idea because shes young, so a simple cartoon version of her would make her look young.

Seeing as shes based on a lemur I wanted her to be flexible, so I tried some sketches of her in unusual positions.

These were 2 possible hair designs I tried, the one on the right was thought of to yet again try to make her look younger. In the end I chose the one on the left with a few changes.

This is the final design for her.

I was very pleased with how she turned out to begin with, I liked her design but I was really happy with it. I didn't think it really stuck to the brief all that well. So I decided to change my design. I knew this was risky so far into the project but I didn't feel she fit the brief and I also decided that she would have been very difficult to model.

More research

Another good character to research was King Julian from Madagascar.

I almost forgot about him, but how could I? Hes a ring tailed lemur?! I had been contemplating making my characters an actual Lemur but I was still adamant to make her half and half.

I could still use King Julian as help though. He doesn't look exactly like a ring tailed lemur but you can tell just by looking at him that he is. The striped tail and the bright eyes and sure signs hes a Lemur.

More Character Design

I wanted my character to be human but have the traits of an animal. This is kinda like the Na'vi from James Camerons Avatar.

They still retain their human appearance but have the attributes of animals in the way they look and the way they act.
I liked that aspect of the Na'vi so I used that Idea for my character.



I like the animalistic qualities of the Na'vi, they are human in a way but have qualities of wild animals, they have long limbs and a tail, bright eyes and sharp teeth.

They are very agile and flexible, they have tails like a cat or monkey, mainly used for balance I'd assume.

Sharp fangs.

You can tell they look human but their ears and eyes are different from a humans, I like that aspect and will probably use that for my character

Character Design - Lemur

Out of the 5 charaters I chose the little girl.

I took a while deciding what I wanted her to be like. Did I want a her mainly human? or mainly animal. First things first was deciding what animal.

After ALOT of contemplating I settled on the ring tailed Lemur. I love how bright their eyes are and of course their long stripey tails. Their long limbs appealed to me also when designing my character.

I didnt want to make a character that was practically a Lemur, I wanted her to be human but with Lemur attributes. So the attributes I chose were, long limbs, big eyes, a stripey tail and the same ears.

New Course

I was quite torn between two briefs for this class.

I rather liked the idea of the "Chop Shop" as it relates to video games and the video games industry is where I would like to end up in the future.

I instead went for the third brief, the Character Design. It just appealed to me more, as I can work on doing some concept work and on modelling. I prefer animating right now, but I think its more to do with that I'm most confident in animating so this brief will help me broaden my knowledge and maybe I will enjoy modelling. I might even prefer it over animating, only time will tell.