Applied Animation: Initial Character Designs

At this stage I don't think Matt, Jemma and I have entirely made up our minds about whether the main two protagonists of our animation are going to be based off of Matt and myself. On the plus side, that would aide with the idea of this animation being a blood relative to The Void, but on the negative, there is something slightly unsettling about creating characters that are so similar to ourselves yet have basically terrible lives and have made some incredibly negative decisions. But I do like the idea of creating satirical versions of ourselves. Throughout my life I have watched shows such as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm where people play fictionalised, basically terrible versions of themselves. So I'm really interested in that idea of making a version of myself that is basically terrible, and then in my real life trying to be as far from that version as possible.

I've drawn Matt in the past many times before, but this time was different. This time it was about taking traits of the real life Matt and turning him into an animated character. Of course I began this process by drawing from reference…

The above were some basic drawn designs I did of Matt, full body in shot just to get an idea about dimensions, obviously in the above image he does look fairly cartoon-like with a massive head so I will alter this shortly.

The above images were more accurate drawings when I was trying to go more for a realistic visual aesthetic. I do really like working with this sort of technique where a drawing becomes like a silhouette or a stencil. And I often find that it differentiates from the way I usually draw in that dimensions are more proportioned.

We decided fairly early on that the documentary animation would take place over around ten years and in that time these characters would go from having good lives to basically everything in their lives falling apart. So obviously I need to age the characters in a realistic way, they cannot look the same ten years later, but furthermore, by the end, they have to look like they have pretty much lost the plot entirely.

Matt aged 20

Matt aged 30

When it came to ageing Matt I tried to imagine what the real Matt would look like in ten years. When we first met, a year and a half ago he did look quite different to how he does now. 

He had much shorter hair, no facial hair, no yellow in his hair, no earring and basically, like myself he just looked much younger. I think we look older now due to a few factors, the natural process of ageing, university life and the rapid intensity of the workload that comes with animation. So in our animation I exaggerate this ageing process a great deal by growing Matt's hair out and giving him a full beard. I also took inspiration for his 30 year old look from Jeff Buckley.

I received feedback about the 30 year old Matt and was advised to further exaggerate the bags under his eyes. Us animators already in second year have bags under our eyes and are generally more tired than in first year. Sometimes I think first year animation students are loud and am often confused at how full of life and basically young they are, but essentially that was us before undertaking all the work we have.