Final Design and Model Sheets

I have narrowed down the final design of the character.  I think it successfully captures the likeness of my friend and manages to look quite stylish at the same time.  I will begin modelling as soon as possible and aim to have the rig working as quickly as possible.  I attempted to do an expression sheet to use as reference when creating the final poses for render.  Most of these are successful, but it will depend on the complexity and the ease with which I can use the rig to create these expressions.

Rig Practice

I have been working through this rig example from Digital Tutors again to re-familiarise myself with the process.  The rig involved here includes a mixture of bones and blendshapes to achieve a flexible rig and is the vital hole in my knowledge which will be necessary to complete the task.  It may prove ultimately more complicated than is necessary, as simple feature manipulation would be enough to achieve some facial expressions, which is the ultimate aim of the project.  It would be nice to have it as a tool of reference when designing characters or even beginning to rig them for animation.

As you can see below it is a very useful rig, so I will develop my character based on this and not worry too much about creating a unique tailor-made rig, as this is ultimately not what the project is about.

Sculpts

I did some 3D Sculpt sketches to see how it would be possible to create this character in 3D.  I find one of the hardest things to be transferring a 2D design into 3D whilst maintaining the style and integrity of the drawing, so this will help inform the modelling process rather well and was a useful exercise.

Character development - Boy

I like this one for the oversized head. It's based in part on the drawing I did of my friend Alan, who often wears these large hats and has very distinct features.

As a character, he'd be either like an energetic kid with cute, round geometric features or with relaxed, droopy features he could come across as a young punk/skater teen.

I feel the style with the slightly more realistic facial shape will offer more in the way of interesting shapes when it comes to creating facial expressions, perhaps even incorporating the ears as a feature in themselves.
I tried to use colour in a bit of a more interesting way to do away with the flatness before and even develop a bit of a style.  It still looks a little flat but the cartoony nature lends itself well enough to this as a feature.
I think this will definitely be the one I take further to completion.

Character Development - Others

Initially I liked the look of this character's hair and face, but it turned out a little dull.  This was one of my first attempts though so I it's not too much of a loss.  Perhaps a different approach where I would spend time developing the silhouette first, or even an overall character; the head on its own is pretty limited in conveying much of the details about the character.  Here I made an attempt at using colour which, unfortunately, just turned out a little bit lame and flat looking overall.

I liked this as a development of a previous character I designed once in a story about Limbo.  His features are very simple and would probably be quite easy to rig up for some easy facial expressions once I have investigated the rigging process.  The benefit to this design is the simplicity as it would be capable of a wide range of stylised expressions.

Character Development - Rabbit

The rabbit was one of my favourite silhouettes. The top ones feel very much like they would suit a children's story or cartoon.
I like the bottom one for the way the ears are a part of the character. I think how oversized they are would really make its shape quite distinct and recognisable silhouetted.  It would be excellent to do but my lack of experience with rigging in Maya will probably make it difficult as it is radically different from a basic human face. It would be a lot of work to rig up the ears as part of it.