JEFE, WOULD YOU SAY I HAVE A PLETHORA OF ROBO’S? ::
One of the great pleasures, and frustrations, of character design is the process. For this project, we had the privilege of already having half of our work cut out for us. Series artist on Atomic Robo, Scott Wegener, has created a character design that is instantly ready for animation. Still, whenever you attempt to bring a character to life through traditional animation, the team must have a fully realized and comprehensibly understood character model. Even with the beautifully iconic and streamlined Robo illustrated for us through two graphic novels, we had to come to a place where the scale, mass and the angles of every aspect of Robo were understood. This turned out to be a fun process but much longer than we originally thought.
In my own expirience with comic illustration, I never realized how much I have the tendency to go “off model” to enhance and stylize a character in any given panel to emphasize the action that is going on in the page. When reading a comic book, the reader fills in the action between panels allowing the artist to take more risks or leaps of faith with the understanding that the reader will take his cue and mentally “see” what is never actually drawn. With animation the same effects can be achieved but there is a narrower margin for error. With this in mind the team needs a solid charcter model that can always be referenced before altering any shot to achieve a desired effect.
Overall, The process was a blast and we came up with an Atomic Robo that we believe will be true to Scott’s vision.
Included in this post are a few samples of the evolution of Atomic Robo from sketchbook to character model sheet, to the finished color pass. Cheers!
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply
