Character design shtyeeeeee

Alright, so this is the first time I have actually posted on time (I try to post on Sundays.)  I also, had all day to do this but I always seem to be doing these things at 3 in the morning on a school night.  Anyway, this week I thought I'd post some character design stuff I have worked on or am working on.  I have been looking over some old sketchbooks of mine and I found some cool stuff that would otherwise shrivel up and die on a shelf.  So to start this off I want to say that for a while I've had a strange obsession with tiki men/totum poles (whatever you want to call them).  I look them up and in my spare time I draw them. This goes back for a few years.  I don't know why I don't just SCULPT them.....but I like their dimensionality and fundamental graphic element.  When i draw, to begin with, I sketch out the volumes...so much so that my drawings look like a big scribbly mess.  But I like them. So I guess that might be the reason I like them.  They also break down animals and humans into graphic abstract, primal forms that I find intriguing.  The messages behind them have always drawn me to them, whether they are to ward off demons or whether they tell an ancient legend.  So here, I start off with some tiki dudes that I drew from reference:

Here are some old pages of original Tiki figureheads I found in some notebooks.

So I entitled this post "Character design shtyeeeeee correct?  Well yeah I started drawing some characters influenced by these strange heads and I wanted to backtrack before I posted what I was working on today so there was some context for these weird things.  Here you go.  I don't know what these are for but I think they are pretty cool.  I'll work them into something.

Here is another character I was sketching this week. He's going to be a redhead even though we were all tought to hate those.  He is forming into sort of an anti-hero. Maybe even a main character that you don't like very much.  Probly a teen gang leader in a rough part of a city?  Anyway- catch his vibe. Can you? It isn't happy... or at least, when it is happy, it's more insane than anything.

Next I wanted to slowly build my vimeo account I just got so0ooo I thought I'd take a film that I did and show some character design sheets I did for that character to show how it crosses over (a little insight into my process?)  So This is the little girl from my film "The Head".  It is about a little girl who finds a robot head in a sandbox.  She parades it around but becomes scared, and it comes to her resuce.  Its a simple story and is ore wholesome than I usually care to do.  But the robot transformation is cool as hell, so it makes up for drawing some cute little girl marching around everywhere.  Here are some design sheets for her.

I try to, in these preliminary drawings, flesh out her prevailing amotions throughout the peice.   Honestly, I will credit Miyazaki for his influence on this.  Mei from My Neighbor Totoro can be seen in this as well as some of Boo from Monsters Inc.

 http://www.vimeo.com/21908644

This is the video on my Vimeo account.  It may not be ready to be viewed yet because I just uploaded it.

Also, next week I will post my character Limp and Lump and their turnarounds along with their adaptations through several different historical time periods of animation (such as the 1930s,40s,50s and so on).

I wanted to post this illustration of a character I drew, because I thought it was pretty cool.  Its old but I like sci-fi so here is a space soldier

Lastly, I will post this selected favorite page of some life drawings I did in the past year.

Alright, I'll talk to you next week, those of you who actually read through all this.
-peace

currently listening to- Cowboy Bebop episodes while I clean up my animation.