Character research

I started out by doing some initial research about my brief, i needed to research the characters i was given. An old bitter woman who is scared of monkeys, a young hyperactive boy, a girl who is more calm, however is still interested in the zoo, a bitter old scottish groundskeeper, and a gorilla.





I looked on the net for some base research, and found a few images of relevant characters and people that i could use to start basing my character designs upon.

PLEASE REFER TO SKETCHBOOK FOR MORE EXTENSIVE RESEARCH




















The importance of character research is vital, it is impossile to start a project without having other outside influences to base your own ideas on. I started looking at other peoples images on the internet, and typical images of the people i need to research. I found other cartoon characters that other people had designed to get my own ideas of what characters i am going to look to design.
As i looked to do initial reseearch, i found myself covering each of the 5 characters i had chosen, and started off with just looking at other examples of similar characters, i then found myself refining my searches, being more specific, for example, looking at Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons, who is heavily related to my own groundskeeper character. I decided that once the research i had collected was sufficient, i would put it all together in a collage- type assembly in my sketchbook, and try to draw influence from the images, and therefore spur on my own ideas and inspire myself.

Claymation Research

I decided to not only look into character research, but also to look into research of what other claymation producers have made within the industry. I looked at the most obvious claymation productions, such as Wallace and Grommit, however i also started to look at CG animation made to look like claymation.