Like the previous post stated, Now I will be going into the first steps I took when beginning my project. as I wanted to create a story with Dinosaurs my first step was to find a species that I could portray in my style accurately but also in a cartoony stylised manner, I also wanted to use dinosaurs that all lived within the same era to one another if I could.
My first two characters I created where intended to be the almost comedic relief of the story, so I knew I wanted them to be rather small to the main characters in comparison, as I went through with my research I came across the small raptor known as Acheroraptor.
Acheroraptor was a small species of raptor, cousin to the velociraptor that lived primarily around parts of the US. They where small in stature with various patterned feathers.
I have always had a keen interest in the history of Raptors during the era of the dinosaurs, the movies produced by Steven Spielberg has always made me very fond of the animal as a whole, so I definitely wanted to have a species in my animated short.
The next dinosaur I wanted to work on was the two main characters, which both are the large Tyrants known as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was a large carnivorous Theropod and is one of the more well known and popular dinosaurs for it’s time. The Rex is possibly the most well known for its portrayal in various projects from Jurassic Park to The Land before Time. It was known to be more of a scavenger but for my story I will be taking some artistic liberties to apply it to the story I want to tell.
The final dinosaur I knew I wanted to add was to be a herbivore of some kind, Like I said I wanted to only use dinosaurs that lived in the same time period together, even if they didn’t live in the same areas as each other I wanted to be somewhat accurate with the time periods. with this I knew my final dinosaur was to be the Edmontosaurus.
The Edmontosaurus was a large Hadrosaurid which diet mostly consisted of various plants, it had no teeth but a strong “beak” that it would use to crush twigs as well as seeds.
With all my research on what species I wanted to use within my short I then went through and began to create the initial sketch concepts for my characters, adding all the typical characteristics from each dinosaur and tweaking to add a more unique spin on the animals as a whole.
The first character I began to sketch concepts for was the little Rex I later called “Tyra” This was to be the main protagonist and the one who is telling their story, I wanted to have Tyra’s gender be up to the viewer as I wanted my story to apply to everyone who saw themselves in the character on screen.
The second character I began work on was Tyra’s friend, known as “Rex” Rex was a little difficult to design as I wanted the Rexes to be different than each other in stature and size without confusion between the two, as having two characters of the same species that are known to be big and bulky would be a challenge to have differences in appearance, however I believe I did a good job in portraying what I wanted to do.
As you can see I have noted my thoughts on both concept sketches, with Tyra I wanted them to have rounder more friendly features while still being recognisable as a Tyrannosaurus. With the second character Rex I wanted him to have a more battle-heavy appearance, that he has seen more of the world in comparison to his smaller counterpart, I gave him more angular blocked shapes and a sharper looking head more akin to that of the typical look a T-Rex would have.
Continuing on from the Rexes I then began to work on the final characters I would be using, the raptors and the Edmontosaurus. I found these guys a lot easier to work with in terms of building their shapes and structure to draw, the Raptors specifically where my favourite as I found ease to differentiate them between each other with their feather shapes and lengths.
At first I wanted to use stick legs to create more differences between the main characters and the raptors, but after my animatic and a one-to-one tutorial I had, I ended up changing this which I will be getting into in my next blog post.
I then began working on a few designs for the Rexes, as I wanted to get their colour pallets completed before I moved onto the other three characters in the animated short.
I browsed the website Pinterest for more inspiration to help me create a friendly design, specifically for Tyra, you can see the link here; https://pin.it/6DWTrmr as you can see I have found these various plush toys that seemed to have a colour scheme I thought was unique and eye-catching enough to be in the world I am inserting them into, I then started to create various colour pallets with these ideas in mind.
Tyra had various designs before I chose their finalised one, I always knew I wanted Rex to be red as I find red to be a colour most used in intimidating-looking characters, but when I spoke in another one to one we discussed Tyra’s design in more depth for what I wanted, I then realise the pallets that I had made for them, none that I had currently felt like it looked right.
I then took the Brown design on Tyra’s section of the designs and changed the saturation to a more blue toned, and I found that it then was perfect and what I envisioned for them.
The only tweaks I made was to make the design more simple so when I began animating it would be less time consuming and I could keep the designs consistent.
Continuing on I also created a few environment studies for my project, which can be viewed below:
In the second study you can see a few characters that I was originally planning but decided not to, as I didn’t want to have to animate a lot of characters due to the nature and short timeframe we had to complete the project, none the less I added them into my workflow.
LazyPuppii Art! 