Initial sketches

At the beginning of this week I decided to change my story as well as my character and theme. I found that my original idea was too much focused on the aesthetic, and I found it incredibly difficult to come up with a full story because I was far too distracted by the overall look of the animation. The brief story that I had come up with was difficult to develop into a well-rounded and short story.

My new idea is centered around a frog. The reason why I chose a frog was because I feel I could utilise their characteristics to create dynamic movements. Because I want to create these dynamic movements, I feel like a frog would be perfect to manipulate into creating exaggerated movements.

I decided to research into the various types of frogs to determine what sort of visual research I would pursue. I gathered a couple of images and key terms as well as key features of the types of frogs to gain a brief understanding. Instantly I was drawn to the frogs that were bright coloured, like the poison dart frog and the tree frog. When thinking of a typical frog colour, the colour green is the main colour that springs to mind, so from this I have decided to have a green frog. I prefer the green hue of the tree frog because It’s bright, and I want the animation to be bright and vibrant.

I decided to create a mood board that consisted of dynamic and detailed images of various kinds of frogs. Even though I am drawn to the idea of my frog character to be a tree frog, I wanted to explore various types of frogs just in case certain characteristic caught my eye. One of my aims was to collect images of frogs in dynamic poses to work from and try and capture their body shapes.

This was an initial quick sketch that I did when I was creating my mood board.

I mainly chose these photos because of the dynamic poses that are demonstrated through the frogs limbs. I also chose these images based on colour and shape too. I am more drawn to the cuter side of these animals rather than the large and bulky kind.

These are some initial sketches I did using oil pastels and water colours. I focused mainly on the faces to try and gauge the sort of shapes that make up a frogs head.

I really like the look of the tree frogs, mainly because of the longer arms and legs and also how bright they are. I am going to base my character loosely on the tree frogs.

I did more research into frog faces using felt tip.

Here I started to quickly generate ideas by simplifying down certain aspects of a frog, like the head and legs. I really like the idea of the frogs limbs being long and thin in order to enhance the bulkiness of the body and to make him appear flimsy.

I did some quick sketches of frogs hands. I mainly focused on the tree frog. I like how goofy the hands look, and because I want my character to appear goofy, I will probably experiment with this look further.

Here I used crayons to play around with the shapes of my character. I like the large eyes and head that counteract the slim body. I also like the idea of using oil pastels or crayons as a medium for this animation. I feel like a stop motion model for this character wouldn't appear as smooth as I would want. Even though I prefer to be sketchy when I draw or animate, I still want to capture the fluidity.

Here I developed the look of my character further by looking into how his moouth would open.

This is a brief idea of what I want my character to look like. I like the large eyes as well as the lump of a body. The thin arms and legs add a sense of flimsiness to the character which is what I am aiming for.

Overall I feel like my visual research was successful and I now have a clear understanding on what I want my character to look like.