Concept and Development

I've been doing sketches and designs of characters for my animation idea, the first few are more along the lines of doodles which I've done as a starting point, from there on out they become a little more refined as my ideas of what they look like become more clear in my head. The first image is just a group of sketches which don't particularly show any specific character but more of a random bunch of possible characters dumped together.

The next group of images show the development of the main boy character of my animation. I tried working out his general look as well as some of his facial expressions, I want the boy to be wearing his pyjamas throughout the animation so his appearance is quite basic.

Proportion wise I wanted the boy to look young enough that he could easily be scared, but also old enough where he's at an age where he's capable of looking after himself so the way in which the character looks has to reflect this.

The above image is a design for the boys pyjamas, they are loosely based on the sort of thing I sometimes wear during the autumn and winter months which is a random old t-shirt with checkered pyjama bottoms. In terms of colour the ones shown will most likely not be used, the reason being that the colours of the boy should contrast with the environment so that he stands out a little bit more, any dark colours will make him blend in too much and he'll be lost against the background.

This is a colour piece which is to show a rough idea of the colours I would like to use for him, the blonde hair and bright red t-shirt will definitely make the boy stand out more from everything else making him easier to see in the animation.

At the start of the animation the boy is wearing a halloween costume from when he was out 'trick or treating'. When trying to come up with ideas for his costume I found it too easy to just go with typical outfits like cowboys, dracula, pirates etc. so I looked around my house and found an old teddy which I used to have when I was a baby, the teddy is a panda with a button like nose so i thought that the boy could be wearing a panda outfit. I also felt that since this animation piece is inspired by drawing heavily on my own childhood fears and nightmares that it might actually be fitting to include this because it's another element of my childhood which is important to me. The images above and below show my initial drawings of the boy in his costume.

The image below is a rough concept of one of the monsters I wanted to have in the animated piece, it is a very tall and gangly creature that walks slowly but covers a lot of distance because of it's long legs, it has a stone like texture and a blank emotionless expression with empty eyes.

I also made a height comparison for the 3 characters in the animation which are the boy, the monster above as well as a 3rd monster which is currently in the development process, although I have a general height that I want for it so I still represented it in the chart below.