Elephant Concepts - Thirsty Planet

The main character in the Thirsty Planet project is an elephant and I have been working alongside the illustrator in our group to form the character. As she hasn't really come up with a character design before, she came up with the basic design and I was able to expand on her idea and come up with different concepts. This was really fun to do as I really enjoy character design and exploring the different ways that the character shows emotion and moves.

Below is Hannah's initial design:

I then had to recreate her style in my drawings which was something really new for me, although I felt it was great practice as in the industry this is the kind of thing I will have to get used to. Below are all the drawings I came up with from Hannah's design.

 

Here was a quick watercolour concept I did for the scene where it's an upward shot of the elephant. I should have used watercolour paper here, but it was only a quick sketch.

Above are the emotions concepts and the different views of the elephant, trying to keep with the original style. I can now pass these drawings on to Hannah where she can recreate them in her style and make them more 'illustrative' rather than line drawings.

Finally, I started to look at how the elephant would walk, here she takes one step. Even though we will be animating using cut out, I still feel I need to look at all the ways an elephant walks as I have never animated a four-legged animal before.

Above is a quick concept watercolour painting of the scene where the women catch the water. I didn't recreate the style that Hannah has come up with for the women yet as I felt it was nicer to keep the concept paintings simple and expressive so I can start to get the feel of the animation. I have really enjoyed coming up with these different concepts and I feel my next steps are to pass on the drawings, and look more into the way that the elephant will walk so that it looks smooth in animation.