Applied Animation: Character Design

So once we got the interviews down and ready for working with, we sat down and had a brainstorm session about what these characters should be. We listened to the footage and came up with a few ideas. One of  them was to make the interviewees animals, inspired by the Creature Comforts animation. However we dismissed that idea pretty quickly as it was not original enough. We also had a suggestion to make the character as aliens or various kitchen items. We considered that for a moment but dismissed the alien idea as it did not have ant relative connection to the theme of the animation, and the kitchen item idea did not really seem appealing to us. Eventually Ollie and I agreed on making the characters human. Since one of the interviewees talked really passionately about meat, Ollie had an idea to gradually  turn him into a werewolf  as he was giving the interview. I liked the idea but then we figured it might be to ambitious. So we decided to make him a surgeon, as he would be giving the interview there would be a surgery taking place in the background. As we also had an interview with a child we quickly came up with the idea or an immature professor, or a kid dressed as a professor to be more exact. We like this idea because we can play around with it and make it funny. As for my parents, we decided to make them astronauts, because the audio quality was a bit poor, we figure the astronaut outfits would help justify the quality, also Ollie felt the Easter European culture is associated with space so we both felt it would be very relevant. As for Ollies grandfather, we struggled with coming the character the most. We had an idea to make him a war veteran gradually turning into a child as he speaks about sweets. But then we figured that it does not necessarily have to be funny. Ollies grandfather story is heart warming and nice so we felt like it did not need to be humorously portrayed, rather simply and genuinely. That is when we came up with the idea to make him a fisherman. I felt it really worked, an old fisherman sitting on the docks, relaxed talking about his younger days. Ollie however did not seem too keen at first but I think has changed his mind since.
After we decided on the characters I went on to make some sketches-

After sending these to Ollie, he pointed out a few small amendments that should made, like making the surgeon a bit bloody, or putting Lithuanian flags on the astronauts. Now its time to finalize the characters and start testing as well finishing up the animatic.