Through the observation of animals, through watching wildlife videos and studying anatomy I then went on to do sketches, preliminary studies of different types of cockerels, donkey and lions showcasing knowledge of animal anatomy.

Animal Anatomy study...An introduction to visual development

Humans use animals to transcend the confines of self and species; they also enlist them to symbolize, dramatize, and illuminate aspects of humans’ experience and fantasy. Humans merge with animals in stories, films, philosophical speculations, and scientific treatises. In their performance on many stages and in different ways, animals move us to think”

(Daston and Mitman 2005)

the use of anthropomorphism being applied to animals in animation.

References for studies in the art of character design with focus upon adapting animals figures for animation.

The idea here is to study how would I apply exaggeration or caricatured in the elements for the audience to read in a believable way.

Looking at this references to understand them and how would I and apply an effective instrument for communication depending on the voice or body .

I got hold of this small toys and did help me a lot I got a feeling when holding them in my hands and had a close look in the construction of the characters, the proportions and the style.

Character's history

In this post I'm going to focus on the characters history, the everyday environment, the personality traits and why they act the way they act ...I had to stop the drawings the reason it's because I need to be more clear why i'm creating these characters.

in a conversation with Kelvin, after I showed him the initial characters sketches he ask me why does the characters look the way they look, I had a few answers but couldn't complete and give enough information about the characters so it was only right to analyse and identify the problem of character design not only visually but also what would make sense, the idea was there but the problem is, why the character look the way they looked, and why they acted the way they acted.

Evaluating Kelvin's feedback I went on to investigate, and one of the discoveries I made was fascinate, Kelvin ask me why the lion was scared of the cock, witch I couldn't answers because I didn't know, but with a bit of research I manage to get the answer. The situation was that I physically tried to portrayed the cock's body has a type of a muscular body , in my mind I was thinking , well If the lion is scare of the cock, it must be only one reason...the cock is strong like rambo or vin disel but I was totally wrong because in my research I found that it wasn't the physical attributes of the cock the made the lion scare, is not even his ability to fight like bruce lee, that scared the lion...the answer...well, the reason there are some kind of sound, which some persons cannot endure and yet can give you no reason for it but are constrained to fly to a specifical properties and antipathies, and such we may conceive to be between the cock's crowing and a lion's ear.

the king of beats having occasion to wonder, how out of so small a body should issue a voice strong, and which is heard so far off, whereas himself can make such great slaughters with so little noise. Which amazement of the lion is so much the greater , if the cock be white, because this colour helps yet more to dissipate his spirits, which were already scattered by the first motion of his apprehension.

Building the character biography

Revelations of my thinking process...the beginning

Stage 1 how the characters are gonna look.

in this stage I will be making sketches of the characters in various poses has facial expressions with various emotions ...the objective is to show my capability in bringing human feeling in these characters.

next step will be making a model for each character, because they are animals and because of their shape it will be easier for me to complete a final model sheet using the model has a reference.

I was trying to get the cartoon feeling in my characters because I didn't want to have realistic characters so I could keep the essence and nature of animation witch is exaggeration and caricature look since the origanal characters are too realistic.

I was thinking how would I began my characters with a simple process that would be easily understandable so I started with a logical form.

In pushing the limits of character design I will trying to fit the characters in the same world.

what can be great about the characters is the tone of the cartoon, so the script will have a major play in creating these characters and their design style,

1 Functional

Form

Simplicity

Can Be Moved Easily

2 Aesthetic

Pleasing Balance Of Shapes

3 Distinct From Other Characters - Recognizable

4 Personality

5 Originality

Visual Reference material...

Before I started to draw the characters,inspired in the fables I took time to brainstorm and combining words to form new ideas to work with.

here I have got research for reference material to acquire has much information that I could get. Visual information was important too, so I could work with more confidence, using them has my backbone.

the objective is not to achieve a realistic animal, but a warner bros.character with a pitch of reality also inspired by kung fu panda.

Here I have the cockerel, donkey and a lion...the characters from the fable I mighty storyboard the original story and another one that will have my personal touch in terms of recreating the story, characters are gonna be the same but the story structure will have changes, its almost complete by the way.