Thursday, September 1, 2011

Design for Media, Week 00: A Menagerie of Characters

For this initial series project, I'm aiming to create some character studies, each from the same limited palette, for an animated short concept that I have, hopefully a minute or longer in length.


The basic story gist is of a traditional circus clown working at a clown union who is up for his quarterly review. His Boss informs him of his poor performance lately (as kids are not laughing at the same things they used to), and if our hero does not receive a positive review from his next birthday party gig, he'll be out of a job. The story then focuses on his tribulations at a young girl's (8-10 years old) birthday party where all the kids enjoy his jokes and gags, except the birthday girl. He must somehow win her over to save his job.


For this series of character study panels for the next 4 weeks, I intend to design our Hero Clown (who still lacks a name), A timid man who just wants to entertain others, but can't cope with how comedy has changed since his glory days, His Boss, a short tempered CEO in clown makeup, The Young Girl, a snooty/bratty girl who thinks she's older and more sophisticated than she really is, and the girl's Mother, a tired single parent who isn't aware at how fast her girl is growing (aka, a woman who would still hire a birthday clown in this day and age).


Any and all feedback is appreciated! Is this too ambitious, not ambitious enough, any foreseeable problems, etc?

4 comments:

  1. I like the idea for the short, but I think the one minute time frame is way too short for what you want to portray in the story. I would also like to know if it’s going to be a 3D or 2D short.

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  2. You are more experienced in animation than I am so I assume you can do a minute or more animation in these 4 weeks, you can do a lot in a minute so I really don't think it's too short. To me doing a minute of animation seems like an overwhelming task. But I have a feeling you can do it. How completed is it going to be? Is it going to be inked and colored?
    I like these characters and the story is fun, I wish luck for our hero.

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  3. I like how you broke down your panels by having 4 characters in your story :) Since you have 4 different characters, I think you should have a same mood or similar color schemes for the background or even in the characters' clothing to have a nice flowing transition.

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  4. Your idea is fun. You can go into alot of different directions. All clowns don't have to be funny, I hated clowns as a kid they scared me. Have fun with this I can't wait to see how this develops.

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