So I'm starting to develop a new major animation. Something I can put in my portfolio and hopefully land a job with. I'm being very thorough with my planning. I want to make sure I make this to the best of my abilities. Here's some concepts I worked out. I'll be choosing one of these and then go from there.
They are all in their underwear just for now. I will be adding clothes later on.
I prefer the one with longer hair and the eyes obscured. I think it captures my attention over the other two because primarily the latter look bored and lackadaisical - and generally less humanoid that the first. There's more to identify with on a physical level, right off the start. The blue's hands look incapable of grasping anything without crushing it. The red one looks, maybe because of the stance, too stiff and un-engaging.
ReplyDeleteBack to the first - I feel like the hair obscuring the eyes really provides you with a lot of options for expression that you may not normally have. The mouth is obviously a useful tool, but if you animate the hair as tool to show expression you may have something very interesting there.
Plus, if you do decide to show the eyes at any point it'll add a measure of drama to the character that we otherwise wouldn't get - it's a big reveal to see such an expressive part of the character and might help make any scenes involving the character more dynamic.
That's my two cents though, and I'm not an art student so my advice may not be as informed as other input.
Oh, one last note - whatever character you go with, the size means that you can really use their body types to do cool shit I think, so definitely try to intensify the lankiness or bulkiness of the character in your animation, even if you end up stretching the model. (This assumes they'll be interacting with humans or other normal-sized objects)