Extended Practice: Developing Lucy's Final Character Designs

Developing the final character designs was quite a complex process. I wasn't just producing one version of each character, I was producing 3. Since Lucy is the main character and the child I needed to finalise her designs first. She goes through three different ages as the animation takes place at three different points in time.

• Aged 10
• At aged 10 she is very well behaved. Looks up to her father dearly and is essentially just a normal child. I wanted this to come across in her design, that is why she is wearing a jersey that perhaps belongs to her father. She also has her hair in a ponytail to symbolise good behaviour.
• Aged 13
• At aged 13 she still respects her dad but is evidently older and getting more mature. She is slightly taller and has let her hair down.
• Aged 17
• At aged 17 Lucy has not had a close relationship with her father for the past four years. Of course this is because she has not forgiven him for his actions. I wanted her independence to come across yet her father's influence on her life to still be evident.
• She's let her hair grow out to the point it goes over her face. She wears eyeliner and a crop top to symbolise her rebellion against her father's conservatism.

I do not know any 10 year olds but in order to create a character design who has a realistic physicality I needed to gain reference. I tried using the internet but all the source imagery I came across looked incredibly fake and all photos of 10 year olds I found were staged.

I ended up using wing as a reference as she is one of the smallest students in the class (of which I'm glad she didn't appear to take offence to me thinking). 

As she gets older I have darkened Lucy's hair colour. Originally Lucy's hair was brown at all ages but Eleanor gave me feedback that often when children are younger their hair is brighter and blonder and the darkening of hair colour is a common occurrence with getting older.

Overall I am happy with Lucy's final character designs. I was given feedback of which I had felt too that her design is quite ordinary and not much of a stretch from the type of characters I usually draw. While I agreed with this I did also feel that the fact that she looked quite simple and like how I usually draw characters means that she will be simpler to animate. Furthermore, the simpler the character design, the more opportunity I have to create more realistic facial expressions and physical movements of which i feel would be harder with a more complicated character design. Also, I believe that with the time I've got to work with, the simpler the character design, the easier and quicker the audience can connect with.

I was and am often inspired by the way Studio Ghibli develop their character designs. Their protagonists often have incredibly simple designs. While this could be viewed as lazy, I feel it gives the animators more opportunities to make them more expressive, also it makes it easy for the viewer to route for them.