3. Main Character Designs

The designs of the characters has gone back and forth quite a bit over the production. The initial idea was to keep the two main characters very simple, with clear graphic shapes and simple colours to distinguish between them easily, as seen below.




We got as far as modelling the characters and rigging them so that we could start making the 3D animatc. That all went out the window when we ended up in the pub with Rich Webber, one of Aardman's best directors and character designers, who offered to design some of the characters in the film. I say offered, the reality was I begged him and threw a few more pints of Doombar into the deal, and below are the brilliant variety of designs that Rich sent me.




These were great! Appealing, and funny to look at, and we knew that the performances would be much funnier than with the original designs, without the story having to change much at all. Next we started refining the designs in Maya using very simple shapes. Personally I find this easier as I'm not a particularly strong character designer, but I know when it feels right. So after many iterations, we ended up with these two fools...



Then from there I sketched various poses to get an idea of the kind of poses the rig might have to hit, especially facially.



So we cracked on down the old Real-time road for a while with these characters but had major problems getting the rigs, especially the faces, to work in Unreal. It all worked fine in Maya and we did a few animation tests that will be shown in a later post, but we couldn't crack the game engine. This was exclusively down to me trying to rig them myself with very limited experience of game engines, and it got to the point where we were completely stuck and looking at abandoning the whole thing. So one night while chatting in the pub (there's a theme emerging here) it was suggested that we simplify the designs again to how they were originally intended. So we ended up with these...



Where two of out favourites were refined into these (rendered in Unreal)...



Now if you think that was the end of it, you are very much mistaken. Even though we rigged them, did loads of animation testing (which will be shown in a later post) and got the whole lot working in the Unreal Engine, deep down we still preferred the previous designs, so after another break doing the day job, we managed to get our department rigger, Nathan Guttridge, to help us out. So this is where we currently are. Two steps forward and one step back, then three steps forward (or something like that)!