Character Design

Dan sent me this last night. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Part of me thinks it’s a repulsive cross between the ugly girl from Yan Svankmajer’s Little Otik, Otesánek himself and a dead zombie child. But another side of me that isn’t looking into his dead eyes thinks the Edwardian doll aspect of the character could work really well.
But regardless of that, we have decided to use this character in the film. I’m Happy to use it the only aspect that worries me is the fact a will have to look at this for the next month of my life :P
We also discussed how he will move and we thought it would be good if his little legs moved like pistons, driving the bike forwards rather than pedalling. This would be really nice and make it seem as though maybe the character is part of the bike. Also disused was how to animate the character – we still want to use 3D and 2D. After a talk with Jim we decided to animate the body in 3D and hand animate the face onto the body. We did toy with the idea of using replacement models in CG which I thought would be really interesting, but practically I don’t think w have the time to make this possible.