Character Design work: Londonder

After polishing up the second animatic to make sure it fitted together nicely, I started working on the design for the Londoner. The thumbnail I felt that worked the most was actually number A3 from the tumbnail sheet as opposed to the design that I'd been using in my storyboard. The main difference between the two is that the storyboard design is a lot stockier, whereas A3 is much taller and thinner.

I chose this design over the original as I felt that a taller, thinner character would feel much more like a London-based middle class office worker than a short and stocky character.

As I was designing him, I kept in mind Carl's design from UP, as I wanted to add a few small curves and circles dotted around his body to help emphasize that he isn't as stubborn or inherently evil as he might first appear, while still constructing his body primarily out of squares and triangles, however, while drawing up his head, I was also reminded of the Tove Jansson's Moomin characters, specifically Snufkin, so I pulled up a few reference images from Google to help me get the placement of his eyes right relative to the brim of his hat.

I'm in the process of doing a breakdown of all the details of this character, and should have it posted up here by Friday.