Documentary Animation: Week 5 - Other Character Designs and Concept Art

Other Character Designs

Designing the other characters are more straightforward than designing Noelline because their design follows Noelline's. The easiest to design was Noelline's mum and baby. Since they barely appears on the animation, I decided not to think too long for her design. I just designed her to look like a grown up version of Noelline. The baby was just a blob face with a curly hair, wrapped on a blanket.

Noelline's Mum and Baby

As for the station master, I refer to my initial doodles when I first listened to the soundtrack. I feel that Noelline described the station master as a miserable man. He was left alone on the station rooftop waiting to be saved by a hero. My first impression informs the development of his design. The hunched square-faced man was my first attempt to depict the misery in him. He looks too clean at this stage with his shirt tucked in. I do like this design, but I think the outfit is too neat for a miserable character. I attempted other ways to make him look like an abandoned flood victim. I remembered based on my personal experience that people used to roll up their trousers when they walk through muddy waters to keep their trousers dry. So, I drew him with rolled-up trousers and half-untucked clothes.

The station master is the most fun character to design. Instead of drawing him with a miserable face, I drew him with a round glasses. He looks really goofy now, and most importantly memorable. I decided to go with the goofy look since it adds humour, and I think a little bit of humour is not a crime to a story told in a lighthearted way. His final design was the fat chubby man with dirty white polo shirt and rolled up trousers. The mud splattered all over his body was meant to show his struggle to survive the flood.

Station Master

The hero in Noelline's story is a stranger that saved her family to the top of a hill. His image is strong and determined; he saved everyone from the flood by evacuating them to dry areas. Tom has finished the storyboard before I designed the hero character, so I decided to have a look at what he has drawn for research. I like the yellow raincoat worn by him since it makes him stood out when juxtaposed to the rest of the supporting characters and the idea of using darker skin tone. However, I am not sure of using the darker skin tone because there is not much to read regarding history of African migrating to Australia and the native Aboriginal Australian living in harmony with the Anglo-Saxon. If anything the racial prejudice was strong in the 1920s so I'd rather avoid mis-representing them. While thinking for a solution regarding this issue, I thought of some ideas of how the design should look like. Since the hero is a stranger that Noelline has only met once, he should be drawn with a fuzzier line, so instead of pencil, I drew him with a graphite stick to differentiate him from the rest of the characters. Also, his features should be as simple as possible just like a kid's scribble of a smiley face to project a heroic figure that has been translated from a kid's mind.

The hero from Tom's storyboard

Based on my description of what the hero looks like, Tom did some character doodles. He came up with a great idea to conceal his face with scarf, turtleneck or the collar of his raincoat.

With a handful of new ideas, I develop the design of the hero. I tried different outfits such as different types of workwear, hats and caps, but I was drawn towards the raincoat more than any of these outfit. I guess straightforward-ness works with the story we are animating. 

For the hero's face, I want him to not look suspicious. More often than not, we perceive strangers as intimidating predators, which is why I drew a lot of suspicious faces. Noelline and her family would be reluctant to board the dingy if the stranger looks creepy. I experimented with his facial features using different shapes, and got to the rounded face design. 

Hero

The rounded face design looks was inspired by the character in this illustration by Matthew the Horse. I decided to incorporate this into the character because the face looks generic. It is open for interpretation so that it gives room for the audience to use their imagination to project an image of their own heroes. This will keep the audience engagement of the storytelling medium as well by leaving the audience a space to use their imagination.

Matthew the Horse's Illustration

Concept Art

The medium test I did for the flood water was painting loosely with watercolour to create blotchy watercolour textures. I did toned down the colours as compared to the colours on the hero character so the characters does not look too jarring when combined together with the muddy flood water on the background. Tom also suggested the idea of using vignette to convey the idea of how much time has passed since Noelline's flood experience.

Steve suggested us to check out the making of Ernest & Celestine blog. The animated parts of Ernest & Celestine however, does look detached from the still background. For instance, we think the line drawing for the still images and the animated bits are distinguishable, such that it is suggesting what will comes next in the story. We think that the aesthetic of these kind of animation is different from the natural look we are aiming for. We were thinking around the line of using moving textures so that it is not too obvious which things are animated and which are the things that aren't animated to ensure that there is coherence in the aesthetic of our animation.

Another suggestion that Steve gave us is to matte white the animated characters and objects on a different layer after drawing their outline so the texture can be applied on the matte layer hater on through After Effects. I think this idea is better than using watercolour brushes made in Photoshop that look synthetic and less fluid. Other than this, the outline can be animated with Rosie's Photoshop pencil brushes. We think that we can adjust the colour so that outline is not too black, maybe dark greyish. However, I personally think that it depends on how we managed our time in this project. If we are progressing really quick, the watercolour matte that Steve suggested would make the aesthetic better, but if we aren't, the watercolour brush that Matt gave to us should be good enough as well.

Rosie's brush test