Sketches
From a very early stage, I knew I wanted to make a story about a boy meeting a peculiar creature, so the first thing I did was to come up with some designs that I felt would be appealing to myself and my target audience (Children and Young Adults).
In early drafts of my script, the boy was to be a boy scout, to make more sense of him being lost in the woods in the first place, so he is seen to be wearing a neckerchief with lots of badges all over his jumper. Though, further down the line, I knew this would pose issues when it came to making the puppet. There would be more small parts to come loose, and a neckerchief around his neck would be really difficult to animate without it "boiling" on screen. This then led to the Dungarees look. I very much liked this design, as it made the boy look much more child-like and endearing. I went with this design right up to the fabrication stage, but when it came to making a tiny pair of denim dungarees I found it really difficult to make them! I couldn't find a fabric that would allow the puppet to move unhindered and also look like denim. So to save myself time, I simply gave the boy a blue and green striped jumper with some dark blue trousers and black trainers. Which I then muddied up to make him look like he had been fooling around in the dirt and whatnot.
The beast was a much more difficult character to design, as i wanted him to be large and covered in hair with big horns so he looks quite beastly in early designs. I felt that in light of his size and appearence he might appear too imposing and scary, and that it might be best to make him slightly more human looking than creature, solely to make him more relatable to the audience. He is a fairly lively character and quite nimble despite his size, so he needed to be designed in such a way that allowed for a wide range of movements. I also wanted the creature to appear as though he lived and belonged in the forest, so I thought that giving him clothing made of real leather would add to that. I also ended up giving him a waistcoat with pockets full of moss, again, to give a better sense of him being a woodland creature.
In early drafts of my script, the boy was to be a boy scout, to make more sense of him being lost in the woods in the first place, so he is seen to be wearing a neckerchief with lots of badges all over his jumper. Though, further down the line, I knew this would pose issues when it came to making the puppet. There would be more small parts to come loose, and a neckerchief around his neck would be really difficult to animate without it "boiling" on screen. This then led to the Dungarees look. I very much liked this design, as it made the boy look much more child-like and endearing. I went with this design right up to the fabrication stage, but when it came to making a tiny pair of denim dungarees I found it really difficult to make them! I couldn't find a fabric that would allow the puppet to move unhindered and also look like denim. So to save myself time, I simply gave the boy a blue and green striped jumper with some dark blue trousers and black trainers. Which I then muddied up to make him look like he had been fooling around in the dirt and whatnot.
The beast was a much more difficult character to design, as i wanted him to be large and covered in hair with big horns so he looks quite beastly in early designs. I felt that in light of his size and appearence he might appear too imposing and scary, and that it might be best to make him slightly more human looking than creature, solely to make him more relatable to the audience. He is a fairly lively character and quite nimble despite his size, so he needed to be designed in such a way that allowed for a wide range of movements. I also wanted the creature to appear as though he lived and belonged in the forest, so I thought that giving him clothing made of real leather would add to that. I also ended up giving him a waistcoat with pockets full of moss, again, to give a better sense of him being a woodland creature.
Maquetting/Sculpts
I feel much more comfortable working in 3D and felt that it would be much more effective for me to rough out character sculpts this way as opposed to 2D images... They would eventually be 3D objects after all and this way of working gives me a much better idea of how the characters heads will both look and function. Below is a selection of concept sculpts and maquettes showing the process of how I went about making the characters heads.