The exaggeration choices were heavily inspired by the styles and characteristics that influenced my animation. The animation character changed and developed based on the research and characteristic taken from the sources I have referenced.
Some of the facial features were taken from the original video that the audio was taken from, although in general I tried to deviate as much as possible from The Princess Bride clip.
Much of the cartoon style was based on three different cartoons, one being the main source of inspiration. The first was the Principle Skudworth from the adult animated show Clone High; the character has a simple shape base style and moves in quick over the top gestures.
The next is the late 90’s Cartoon Network show Dexter’s laboratory particularly the Dee Dee character that moves very mischievously.
Finally the most influential Nickelodeon’s Invader Zim, especially when he laughs insanely. When I first heard the audio I picture a very Zim type character speaking, having spent a lot of time watching the show at the time. All these styles work well with slapstick style visual humour and also have a graphically pleasing thick black outlines around the outline of the characters.
Having taken pictures for character poses before, I thought it could be useful to film myself acting out the facial expressions while speaking the dialog. I used this video as one frame of reference for the look on the character’s face when he is speaking.
The character ended up as a mesh mash of the three cartoons I mentioned above. When colouring the character I referenced the colour test I had done before. The main change that occurred was the white shine in the scientist’s hair, which I left out as it didn’t seem worth the extra time it would have taken to paint on in each frame. I felt that the designed worked fine without it.
To animate the cartoon I first did a line test, creating the fully animated sequence with a stick man. After designing the character I drew out the basic shape over the top of the stick man on each frame, improving the animation and movement. Finally after referencing the cartoon videos, the clip from the movie and the video I filmed of myself, I added all the extra detail, facial animation and lip sync to the finished character.
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
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