Character Design Development

I was originally going to change my character design completely when I came up with the story, however I quite liked this troll/goblin king idea and therefore I decided to keep this general idea but modify it a bit. Beram is now a stoic troll king who is hunted by an evil, troll-hating human. To help with my character design, I looked at similar characters:

I chose these as references as I liked their more squat proportions and strong shape language communicating their personalities. Characters from above feature in the following shorts: Double King, Le Royaume, Rhubarb King and The Tree.

I then altered Beram 's design to make him more squat and more king like, as well as building on the comments from the preivous iteration, such as making his head more rounded with a sloping forehead and a more jutting chin. I found I kept making Beram look too angry and aggressive rather than just gruff and tired, as minute changes in posture and proportion would effect his personality dramatically.

Once I was happy with the design communicating Beram's personality correnctly, I cleaned up the sketches in a basic t-pose. I decided to change the line quality from the first t-pose, opting for a thicker and cleaner style as I feel it suits the character and short better and would also allow me to colour the character much quicker (learning from the previous Slapstick animation that textured lineart doesn't work well with the fill tool). I then fleshed out the turnaround and added colour and shading.

What I like/what went well?:

• The turnaround lined up pretty well and kept proportions
• The lineart style
• The alterations of Beram's design to make him more squat
• Beram's face change - less blocky whilst still having clear shape design
• Crown design as its simple yet still visually appealing
• The simplicity of this character design

What could be improved?:

• I should have drawn Beram from multiple angles and in different poses in the sketching and development phase, as I found it hard to picture his front view just from a side profile. It would also give him more depth and allow me to understand the character better
• The front profile looks a bit off as there is almost too much body - maybe avoid full front view shots in the short
• The colours mayh need tweaking when fitted into the different environments
• The lineart colour may need to be changed to complete black to avoid unusual interactions with backgrounds
• The shading is simplistic but maybe a bit too fiddly and time consuming - I could opt for a tetured or messier shading style

Other people's comments:

• Posture and facial expression really sells character's exhaustion
• Crown base may be too narrow to stay on Beram's head - this would be a concern if I animated Beram using stop-motion, however he will be 2D animated so I think it will be okay
• Crown could be makeshift/cloak could be tattered to help convey sadness - I like this idea, and could incorporate it into the final scenes of my short to show Beram's progression through the ordeal. It may be more complicated to animate however, so could be a final details thing/done with colouring