Saturday, 20 October 2012

[Drawing] Lily character rotation


One of my tasks as the animator for the Royal Armouries project was to create a turnaround for our mining character. I decided to take it further and animate a 360 cycle rather than just drawing them down as an image. This worked so well that I decided to try it out with my new character builds. Seeing as Lily is the most developed so far, I decided to go with her. The style worked just as I'd hoped, the build of basic shapes made posing and drawing the other angles a lot easier. This will come in handy later down the line when I get onto the over the top action scenes I'm hoping to incorporate. Making this rotation also showed me that her old hairstyle with one side over her eye was rather difficult to draw from other angles, so after a talk with a classmate, I decided to have one side loose and the other behind her ear. All in all I'm satisfied with the character build and I now have enough information on proportions and angles to draw and animate the more complex scenes. After this was done, I finally came up with a surname for her which I think suits for several reasons. I chose the surname "Lavender" because of the following reasons:


  • Old cartoons and comics often used alliteration for their character names, for example Timmy Turner, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Fred Flinstone, etc. This adds another tribute to the retro style I'm taking inspiration from.
  • Lavender is purple, Lily's theme colour is purple.
  • It's a reference to one of my favourite things, Pokemon. In the first games, there is a town called Lavender Town which is infamous for its creepy atmosphere and music:
  • Lavender town is also associated with ghosts, which ties in with the paranormal themes in this animation such as banshees and demons.
  • Lavender and Lily are both plants.
I find it extremely satisfying when things fall in to place like that and link together nicely. I'd say Lily is nearly complete as a character now.

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