[Three]

Like a lot of under employed college students, in excess free time I am part-time bohemian artist. It has been during this formative time of my life that I met a comedian who had a true passion for writing and mentioned a cartoon idea he would like to pitch. It meant upgrading from Ramen noodles to Kraft dinners, so naturally I felt pretty good . Anyway, what follows are some character designs for a demo of animation I’m currently working on, and I’m posting to gather general impressions and critiques. Although, please note that if some things seem oddly proportioned or you notice the lack of shoelaces, those are likely intended to be individual quirks for those characters.

These are a limited number of finalized designs, to save you the hassle of too much vertical scrolling. You can click each one of these for a bigger version.

Ramzi Christenson, by far my favorite character as he’s written like a model for the supreme moral good of the 1950’s era ideal. The project requirements were to design an attractive blonde haired male of decent masculine proportions with a robotic right side. The symbolical significance of this design was that Ramzi was to be identifiably "half-man, half-machine" to represent a man who not only overcame seeing machinery as a tool but an extension of his direct will. A message related to the writer's goal, that I communicated with making several sketches before finalizing the design with what you see available now.

Nicknamed “Flaming Hair” whenever I talk about him, for obvious reasons.



Rhea Cortwright. It was requested by the commissioner that she be sweet and inspire the protective instinct in people. I did this by giving her big eyes and a curvaceous body. The most notable thing about this design is the clothing itself, the environment in which she lives in is futuristic, so I developed a casual outfit that I personally thought would be fitting for “3000 A.D.” Seriously, I couldn’t see myself doing this without making her look like a race queen.

Nicknamed “Hot Tits” whenever I communicate with people in this project.





Jayson Grimm. Prick, with maybe a past that justifies his hatreds but that’s all you guys need to know about him. His chains do have a degree of lethalness but I won’t describe those.

Nicknamed “Angst”



Also, people have said my cartooning style is similar to Titan A.E., maybe that explains why I like that movie so much.

[Isric]

The first thing would be: draw from life. You need more practice to sell these characters more. For the most part your anatomy is correct, just not nice to look at. Also, watch your line weight.

The bigger issue is pure character design. These guys aren't very memorable right now. This is your chance to show us something we haven't seen before. There's a blonde guy with a blue maze on half his body wearing...well, slacks. Then you have a girl in a white tenis suit, and a dude...with...brown hair. By the time most people leave this thread they'll have forgotten them. Try kicking us in the nuts with character design.

The way you do this is by starting to ask questions. If a man is half machine, which half is mechanical? how different is the technology from his flesh? how is it attached? how advanced is it? does it give him discomfort? if so has he found ways to cope? is one side better than the other? how does it work? what is the benefit of being half machine? The answers to all of these questions (and many more) will help you create something original and fresh.
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matt - rhodes

[Drew]

Unless this will be very limited animation (think Aqua Teen Hunger Force) you need to simplify some parts of these characters. The soles of the shoes on the guys will be a pain to animate accurately, and they're not even an important part of the characters. The robot guy has a ton of detail on his robot half. You could make it look robotic with a tenth of that detail, and it would probably end up being a stronger visual. Right now it's really not reading as robotic. There are other parts that need work as well but you get the point.

I have no idea how you're going to animate this, though, so maybe you've taken all of that into account. How exactly are you going about the animation?

Oh, and listen to Isric. He knows what he's talking about.

[Three]

You guys kick ass, let me say that first off. Isric, you are spot on and I really wish I was not damaged by my days in mechanical design classes, I am a draftsman secretly hiding my desires to work in cartooning. After I finish my two year degree I'm transfering. I have been self teaching with the help of Gray's Anatomy medical texts and John Lasseter books. As far as animating goes, I use shortcuts. A lot of scenes in storyboards have close ups of a specific feature or characters are zoomed out because of drawn back perspectives.

Most of all, I think I need to participate in drawing threads here. Are there any notable superstars here that I can digest?

[Drew]