Character walk & ball exercises — initial concepts and designs

It's been one of 'those' days.

The new part project kind of got off to a bad start for me. I don't know whose hands these are, but the drawings coming out of them certainly aren't mine. It was weird — I was talking to Jazzy and there seemed to be an endless flow of stuff, but as soon as I sat down to get them onto paper, everything just went. Proper idea constipation.

I got a few sketches down — including one with a flamingo that I actually quite liked — but as Andy rightfully pointed out it would have proved to be absolute hell to animate.

I started running loosely with something using the balloon, puddle and football — my idea was to have the character enter, a bit down in the dumps maybe, then to have a heart-shaped balloon with a letter attached drift by. He reads the letter as he walks along; whatever's written there really cheers him up and his whole demeanor starts to change. He maybe starts skipping, totally overjoyed ——

 

—— doesn't see the puddle approaching and falls right into it (ridiculously deep). He clambers out and is sopping wet, so he's kind of swinging his arms, weighed down with water, really angry and fed up. He encounters a football and boots it out of anger. It ricochets off the side of the screen and smacks him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

It sounds fairly fleshed out on paper but I didn't really manage to get too far with it. The character design tripped me up a bit.

I was really grateful to have Andy floating around today — he was really helpful and introduced me to a little yes/no game that I initially struggled with. Once I stopped overthinking everything I got much more into it!

As a result, I ended up with a fat old French man who can blink and is quite athletic, but doesn't like Mexican food.

Started doodling a few things to try and get a feel for the character. He still feels alien to me but I'm going to keep ploughing through and see what I can come up with. I'm definitely not there yet — still feeling a bit frustrated and lost, but it's definitely progress and certainly a vast improvement over the horrors of the morning. The character idea is definitely fun and quite exciting!