Animation Workshop: Visual research

I began my research by looking at character sheets, character designs and art from comics, animations and music. For example Gorillaz, Blood Blockade Battlefront, Over the Garden Wall and other designs from artists I had found on Behance and Pinterest. For this brief I wanted to look at different proportions as to inform my ideas with creating a character. I found Jamie Hewlett's work to be quite inspirational with his use of proportions that can be seen with the band Gorillaz art work and animations. I liked the shortness of the torso and the elongated legs which worked well with the sharpness of the lines and the style of the facial features. I also liked the line shading that complemented the shading on the clothing as it gave it a sketchy but finished approach to the lineart. I researched more into different proportions and found Anna Cattish's designs to inspirational through how she uses clean lines with a mix of angular and curvy lines that include elongated legs. I really liked the style of the facial features and expressions that she could make with the eyes alone; even though the eyes were very simple they still portrayed the emotion that the rest of the body language depicted. I also liked the cheshire cat grin that some of the character designs had which reminded me of Hewletts work. Another artist who used the same proportions with the elongated legs, Kichaa on deviantart. I really liked his style with the simple colouring and intricate detail with the lineart to represent the pattern in the clothing or facial hair. I found that the use of the skinny legs and slightly longer arms worked with the use of varying style of line. I really wanted to create something that absorbed this body proportions as I felt that this would help me to improve my own style.