Idea development progress and such

So I went away, got myself in even more of a tizz, but still managed to get a few bits done. Too bad they're all crap.
I tried a little more toying with the puppet magician-type thing and started doodling a few bits and bobs, trying to figure out something vaguely resembling a character design in the hopes that it would get the bowels of my brain moving.

I managed to track down the full version of the animation I mentioned last time — "The New and the Other," it's called, the graduation film of . It's so awesome and amazing that it makes me both happy and horribly depressed at the same time.

 

I found it helpful and inspiring, though. I especially loved the distortion and caricatures on the faces, so I started mucking around and seeing if I could maybe possibly pull off something similar.

Starting pretty generally, just drawing... FACES. Trying to figure out something that might be caricaturable into a convincing magician. I don't know.   

It's a bit tricky to "feel" the style in such rough sketches (especially when you suck as much as I do) so I waddled into Photoshop and tried to put something more stylised together. I failed.

I don't know, I just really wasn't feeling it at all. I started roughly patching together a face (bottom right) using cut up photos robbed from Google images to see if I could emulate the style but it just didn't seem to be working for me at all. He looks like a weird fish-man. Which is okay, but not what I'm going for. Maybe I picked the wrong face.

I think the little guy right at the bottom (with the body) is okay but I don't know, I'm still not loving him. Bit generic. Boring. Can't get a grip on how he moves or anything. It did get me thinking though, maybe it's just too "realistic" for the type of silly thing I'm going for. I started wondering if there was a way to kind of combine that sort of effect with a bouncy "toonishness" that might fit the sort of exaggerated movement I want.  

 

Angela Anaconda is positively terrifying (I remember being really freaked out by it as a kid) but a pretty interesting example of how you can still get something pretty bright and colourful using similar techniques. Perhaps a better example, though, are those old British Gas adverts... or even better, some really lovely stuff from Slurpy Studios.

It's very simple, but it works nicely. Animation and colours are great... as to be expected from such a fantastic studio. I'm still not so sure it will work for my purposes, though, maybe the photographic heads aren't really something I should go for. Maybe it will work if I'm clever and can find a way to strip them down so you've still got traces of realistic-ness (is that a word? Spellcheck says no) but keep it fitting with a bouncy, almost illustrative body.

I don't know. BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD, I guess.