Statement of Intent

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.