Throughout the course of this animation the storyline has
had changes both large and small, and naturally these changes have had an
impact on both the setting and the characters used in the final video.
The video initially centred around Hermit, a grumpy farmer character who wanted to be left well alone by others. This privacy was then broken by the introduction of the aliens. Hermit went through a few alternate designs after being called unfit for looking "like a little boy". By the time I'd gone through a few changes, I no longer liked the character and felt he'd slipped too much from my initial intentions, which was when the scientist approach came into play. I moved on from Hermit and created an entirely new character, Clemont. This character takes the same lonely nature as Hermit (as I wanted a gap for the aliens to fix). Clemont lives in an abandoned surveillance bunker, looking for creatures such as bigfoot which have been rumoured to be seen in the area. I followed the same story as my initial idea, with the aliens crash landing and the human character helping to fix their ship before it explodes, but the characters seemed to lack an initial drive and closure. This is when I decided to make Clemont a painter. Using this I gave him a reason to be looking for creatures on the screens in his bunker, as well as something to complete at the end. He lacks technological skills, which are then accounted for when the aliens stay with him at the end, giving him complete focus on his goal, which he finally achieves.
The video initially centred around Hermit, a grumpy farmer character who wanted to be left well alone by others. This privacy was then broken by the introduction of the aliens. Hermit went through a few alternate designs after being called unfit for looking "like a little boy". By the time I'd gone through a few changes, I no longer liked the character and felt he'd slipped too much from my initial intentions, which was when the scientist approach came into play. I moved on from Hermit and created an entirely new character, Clemont. This character takes the same lonely nature as Hermit (as I wanted a gap for the aliens to fix). Clemont lives in an abandoned surveillance bunker, looking for creatures such as bigfoot which have been rumoured to be seen in the area. I followed the same story as my initial idea, with the aliens crash landing and the human character helping to fix their ship before it explodes, but the characters seemed to lack an initial drive and closure. This is when I decided to make Clemont a painter. Using this I gave him a reason to be looking for creatures on the screens in his bunker, as well as something to complete at the end. He lacks technological skills, which are then accounted for when the aliens stay with him at the end, giving him complete focus on his goal, which he finally achieves.
Above
is the initial design for Hermit. In the first pass he was planned as a bit of
a clumsy scatterbrain, shown by his long arms and blank stare. I decided the first pass didn't look enough
like a farmer, so I had a change of costume and added the grumpy side into his
personality at this stage too. With this second design, I made a character
sheet:
The style was somewhat impacted by another
project I was developing at the time, and I thought the characters looked a
little too similar once I'd made this pass. To the left is a concept picture
for an online show Eddsworld that I worked on, containing a similar face
structure and body build. This, combined with complaints from tutors about the
character's age pushed me onto few
redesigns of the character, none of which I particularly grew attached to.
