The Message: Character Design

So Callum (my partner) and I divided up the character design, I took up the bully and he volunteered to do the wimp. After the lecture about character design I took on board some of the points that were covered, which I wrote about in my previous blog post, for instance, the square, angular shapes make the character look more masculine. Following the stereotype of the bully he is not very smart, so I thought a square head among characters with round heads would indicate that the school has not shaped him like other students, and a strong physical build like broad shoulders and huge hands. Also I considered making the bully bigger in proportion of other things, like the phone or his table. Since the bully is supposed to be intimidating Callum proposed his eyes would be hidden under huge eyebrows, which would indicate this sort  of scary seriousness. I drew up a few sketches in the begging while discussing with Callum our character designs together-

 However I needed to take it further so I have also looked into some photos of monkeys, because I wanted the bully to have a posture of a monkey for obvious reasons.

It is easy to spot which ones are the skeletons of monkeys and which are of human, it is because monkeys have shorter legs and longer arms, their posture is more arched forwards, and because of the hunched shoulders the neck shortens. So I applied the same logic to the bully character 

We also considered the uniform for the characters, and we both decided that the bully is not going to be wearing a jacket to make him look a bit sloppy, as well as his shirt not being tucked in properly, and looser tie.

 And in these sketches I started thinking about the geometry, and how the character looks in a T pose, also trying to put his body proportions into place and start thinking in 3d terms. After that I took a look at some animators solutions for facial expressions and practiced some myself-