AESOP'S FABLES: Character Design

After discussing the script with the group, I was assigned the task of designing and animating the character of the fox. I started out a bit too complicated than the brief really called for but from this I was able to simplify my design further and further.

From the start, I wanted the fox to have the defining face of a trickster, as that is his role within the story so I tried to incorporate a smirk and a slit for eyes as this made him look tricky and untrustworthy.

I toyed with making the fox bipedal or keeping him on four legs during the initial sketching, and it took little time to decide to keep him on four as the fox was too tall on standing upright on two legs. He could have easily reached the food at this height, making our story make less and less sense and so he had to be made smaller, though he is able to stand and sit on his hind legs but with limited reach and movement.

Expressions for the fox. It was unclear at this point how much the character would emote but this helped me to get more into his personality. I envisioned the fox as a young clever kit who was hungry so I tried to keep him cute and silly. Later on this was to change, but for now with this design you were able to empathise with the fox if you so wished.

Toying with the idea of giving the fox some additional props such as a scarf or a bow tie, as in the script he is said to be wearing a dinner jacket during one scene when he eats an apple. We found this that was unnecessary and  tried to simplify it further.

Water colour test. This design was too complicated, and too friendly and wide eyed looking. The colours are also too bright, I needed something a lot darker.

Taking inspiration from Pablo the Little Red Fox, an animated cartoon from 1999, I finally found what I was looking for. I went for a bean shaped body with limbs, tail and head attached onto it, which is loosey based on the style of Pablo the Little Red Fox and changed to suit our style requirements. 

For a few weeks this was the final design for the fox that was going to be used. He was small, I knew how I wanted him to walk and move about.

Because we had to keep characters throughout every group's animation look consistent, I ran into the problem of the other group having done their fox very tall and standing on two legs. This absolutely would not work for our animation as it would make the fox too tall, and he would look out of place next to the birds who were not anthropomorphised nearly as much. However, I did this test and we all agreed we would not be changing the fox to this as it was inappropriate and awkward looking.

There was a lot of debate going on about the fox needing to have visible eyes even when the design was okayed. I tried to give him some eyes but they made everyone laugh too much along with the big fat lips so this was immediately dropped.

We decided the fox was too much of a sympathetic character so I was asked to add visible untrustworthy eyes instead of using slits. At first it looked weird to me but, venturing away from the horrible round big eyes like the ones above, I found a shape similar to the slits that worked very well. I also added lips around the mouth to be in keeping with the brief's request to use Creature Comfort mouths without making it too big and silly looking. Luckily, the fox doesn't speak, so it's only when he eats that you can really see this.

It was my original intention for the fox to be an ambiguous character, not necessarily the bad guy in all of this. But I was told we needed to see him as a villain and the fox was looking too friendly and innocent, and so as a group it was agreed that it needed to be changed. So, along with the eyes, a small tweak in colour scheme was in order.

I tried a very dark tipped tail at first but it was too dark against the rest of the animation which is quite bright and vibrant.

Using the colour picker I picked out the brown of the inner ear and used it to colour the tip of his tail. This is our final fox design that has been used in the final animations. I personally like it, he looks like a little chocolate orange. I miss the original light yellow tail as it is closer to a real fox but it is not such a huge loss, and this suits the character better.