Statement
of Intent
For the past 3 years I have been watching a few too
many cartoons with my little girl. The ones that raised my curiosity the most,
were Peppa Pig ( www.peppapig.com). The creators, Neville Astley
and Mark Baker designed a set of characters (Fig 1), which are all mammals,
with individual personalities, each one, based around the real life
characteristics of the animals they represent, and all this, with minimal
visual input.
For my Final Major Project, I am
looking to create a character, to model and animate it.
The character I intend to create,
will be a piece of fruit, as I am currently working on a project, aimed at
creating an interactive text adventure game, where all my characters are fruit
(The game is titled Fruit Town). The main character is called Miss Pear and she
is, as the name suggests, a pear.
All the concept art skills I have
acquired until now, I will apply in the first stage of my project, meaning that
I will start by creating credit card concepts of Miss Pear, followed by refined
sketches and finishing off with a final piece.
Besides this, I will then need to
draw Miss Pear as seen from various angles, in order to create a clear image of
what she will look like as a final product.
All the skills accumulated
through building various inanimate objects and a cartoon version of myself, in
the 3D Studio Max sessions this year, will then be used to build a 3D model of
Miss Pear.
And finally, I will try to
animate her. As I haven't yet studied animation at all, I am not sure what to
expect, and how long the process will take, but I am really aiming at
presenting an animated character as my Final Major Project in just over 3
months.
My main objective with this
project, is, to consolidate my drawing and modeling skills and to acquire, most
needed, animation skills.
All of this, will then constitute
the base for my Final Project next year, where I will build upon this and
hopefully create either a game or a cartoon style animation.
*Other references for my concept, were the Pocoyo (Fig 2) cartoons,
as well as Pib and Pog (Fig 3).
Both these cartoons have got
simple designs, as 3D characters, with the environment around them nonexistent,
or extremely minimalist, but the overall effect created, is amazing.
They both create a similar effect
to the Peppa Pig cartoons I mentioned earlier, and this is the style that
attracts me the most and the one I would love to develop.
