This was my first design for little red riding hood. I had the idea of her being quite sassy and to look older and tougher than she really is. I wanted her to have long hair which could be interesting when animating to show wind/body movement of that scene. I wanted this character in particular to be wearing trousers, as in many fairytales the main female character is dressed in skirts or dresses which sometimes seems to hinder their fighting skills. I wanted to stick to the red theme of the cape, but instead of it being the conventional red cape I wanted to see how a coat would look instead. Throughout all of my character design I kept to a similar style to Tim Burton as he was my main inspiration for this preproduction. Keeping features such as big eyes, thin body, big head and small nose and mouth. Once finished I realised I didnt really like this design as I thought she didnt look how i would have imagined her. I think she looks quite aggressive, however in the story she comes across quite shy and child like. Again, sticking to the Time Burton theme, i kept this designs body quite thin with big eyes and small facial features. However, tried to see how she would look with a different shaped head. Tim Burton uses unrealistic shapes and sizes for his characters heads and bodies, I wanted to incorporate this technique into my own designs where possible. Because I didnt like the coat idea in the last design i decided to go back to the original story and have her wearing a red cape. I wanted her to have a different spin on this though, so designed her with the hood down and her whole head exposed. I liked the idea of having contrasting colours within her clothing as it would show a childlike side and a quirky side to her. For this i decided to use bright yellow for her top as this added a vibrancy to the outfit, in comparison with the rest of the dark outfit. Again, I liked the thought of her wearing trousers, so designed her wearing dark blue jeans. From the last design, i liked the long hair feature so wanted to keep it for this design. I decided to put her hair in plaits just to try a different style of long hair from the previous design. I honestly wasn’t very keen on this design as i thought her head was completely the wrong shape and would defiantly use a different head shape for her in future designs. For this design I wanted her to be different, style wise, to the other designs. I noticed that in many fairytale stories, the characters are typically have a white ethnicity and long flowing hair. I wanted to try and break this stereotype by bringing different ethnicities into my work. I really like this idea and think I would like to use her in my final design. I also wanted to make her hair completely different to the previous designs, I decided to stick with her ethnicity and give her afro hair, something I feel show be celebrated and shown more in fairytales. I kept the red cape but this time tried it with the hood up instead of down. I liked how this looked as it felt more true to the original story. Again i had her wearing trousers and a different coloured top. However thought the previous design had too much contrast and bright colours, so toned that down for this design. Because none of the previous designs were carrying a basket (which in the original story she was), i designed her with a basket which she would be taking to her grandmas. I liked this small feature as it gives a sense of purpose as to why she is in the woods in the first place. I made her head much smaller and more narrow than the previous design and think this works much better. I also made her eyes slightly bigger and more round than the previous designs, I decided I preferred this much more. I still gave her the Tim Burton features such as small legs and arms and smaller/ pointier facial features. Overall, i really liked this design and would probably use this for my final character. For this design I wanted to see what she would look like if I based her off of Coraline herself. Even though I really liked this design, I felt as though it was too close to the character of Coraline eg her face shape/ body shape. I did however change her hair which I really liked, it looks flowy and as realistic as this style allows – and as though it would be nice to animate. I again, decided to keep her in the cape and jeans which contrast each other. I feel as though I would still prefer to use the previous design as I feel as it good idea to move the characters away from the original characters from the story, to really make it my own.
For this design of the woodsman I decided to look at another character from Tim Burton. I tool inspiration from the Corpse Bride’s ‘Victor’. The aspects I took from this character were his big eyes and narrow face. Also keeping his narrow facial features. Keeping with Tim Burtons style I made the woodsman have a small body frame. I gave him laid back clothing, which is opposite to Victor, however I wasn’t very keen on this. I decided not to go with this design as it wasn’t how I envisioned the woodsman to look. He looked to ‘polished’ and didn’t really look like he would have been working in a manual labour job. I really liked this character design. I based him off of ‘Mr Bobinski’ from Coraline. He is an older man with an incredibly large belly and very thin limbs. His appearance is very ‘out of the ordinary’ which is what originally drew me to him. I thought he fits the stereotype of a ‘woodsman’ in comparison to the last design. I have him plain clothing which was quite scruffy, trying to give the impression that he has been working inside. I kept with Tim Burtons style and gave him an unproportionate head, however, experimenting with giving him smaller eyes. I liked how this looked. I then went back to the first design to see if small changes would make him suit the role more. I changed his clothes into more appropriate work clothes. I really liked the outfit and would probably keep this for my final design. I then gave him different hair and more facial hair, I really liked how this character turned out, however, still didn’t think it was right for the role, so I moved away from it. For my final design, I based this character on ‘Wybie’ from Coraline. Wybie has a larger head which I incorporated in this character. I also made his facial features (especially eyes) smaller as I don’t think the previous big eyes work very well. I kept a few features from the last character such as his clothes and hair. I would like to take this design further and use it as my final woodsman design.
For the grandma I decided to look at the women characters in Coraline. Firstly I looked at the ‘mother and the other mother’ from the film. I took inspiration from her size and shape and also her facial features. I decided to change her clothes to suit and ‘older’ person, I gave her pyjama-like trousers and a sleep jacket, with slippers. I also gave her glasses to add to her. I tried her with medium dark hair, however I think this made her look too young and I decided to change this. I changed her hair, changing to match her clothing colour, I much preferred this. I also decided to see what she would look like if I made her slightly wider. I think I prefer he being slightly lager. I also darkened her skin as she is related to Little Red Riding Hood, whose final design has dark skin. Even though I liked the previous design, I decided to look at another character from Coraline. I used one of the old ladies from the Pink Palace as inspiration for this character. I think this character worked slightly better as the inspiration character was already of ‘grandma age’. I also decided to change her clothes to even more stereotypical ‘grandma’ clothes. I much preferred this design and would defiantly use this for the final design.
For the wolf I again used inspiration from one of Tim Burtons designs. I really liked how this design turned out. I think it embodies what I want to portray within the wolfs character. I want him to be scary and look over everybody in an almost patronising way. I like how he is on two legs, almost giving him human characteristics. His arms look as though he is about to swipe somebody up. I gave him large death to add the danger aspect to him, and I almost gave him a long tongue and made him drooling, as though he is ready to eat someone. I kept the overall design the same, however changed his colour from black to grey. I di this so his outlines would be noticeable and makes it easy to see features such as his arms and ears and outline of the fur. I much prefer this version of the design. I also kept his yellow eyes as they can stand out as he looms in the darkness.
INSPIRATION IMAGES –
CORALINE
VICTOR
MR BOBINSKI
WYBIE
MOTHER
OLD LADY
TIM BURTON WOLF DESIGN
STOP MOTION PUPPET – RESEARCH –
Little Red Riding hood will be a stop motion animation, meaning I would need to create physical models of the characters. This video was helpful as I didn’t really know much about making thee puppets before watching it. This video gives you an idea of what materials you would need for each puppets and how to create them. Because I want my animation to be free flowing/including realistic movements, I would need to either buy an armature with pre-made joints (to give each character fluid movements). OR i would need to create my own armature from the model wire and create joints by adding putty to the joints, giving the armature moveable limbs and separate bones. It was also helpful as it gave cheap alternatives that you could use (useful for making my LRRH animation as I wouldn’t have the funding from a company behind me).
https://www.animationsupplies.net/armatures.html – this is a link to a store which sells a variety of animation supplies. I was particularly interested in the armatures they sell. Because LRRH is going to be stop motion and the characters will need to be made from armatures, this was handy to see the different types of armatures which are available and at what prices.
Sapphire's Animation yr2 