Module: NCI546 Character design evaluation

For this project I was asked to design a character with a fully detailed backstory, personality and produced in a style that would best suit it.

Before I began actual work on this module, I was given a task over the summer to produce a storyboard that would help portray a character. Seeing this as a good opportunity to continue with a sequel to my first comic and introduce a new villain, I once again chose one of my own personal characters of whom just required the correct matching style to bring him out.

My character is a mutated gorilla named Grill who became mutated by radiation from a mysterious crystal that didn’t originate on earth. Through my storyboard I portrayed him as a supposedly well meaning super smart gorilla who was willing to help humanity, until half way near the end he reveals his true colors as a sadistic villain who despises humanity due a traumatic childhood experience involving hunters. During a brief scuffle with the team of heroes he almost succeeds in his plan of setting off a bomb in a locked building filled with human hostages while he escapes through a glassed domed roof, however he underestimated the heroes, when Colm the frog used his elastic tongue to swing the bomb back towards him latching on to his right elbow.

Realizing he only had a few minutes left Grill was able to reset the bomb to a minimal blast, which destroyed half the building and his entire right arm. Miraculously he survived the explosion and escaped to a nearby scrapyard where he was approached by doctor Cheetah who offered to build him a new arm and a chance at revenge which he a agreed, swearing to get even with Colm. 

I can’t accurately remember where my original inspiration for Grill came from, but I mainly believe it came from watching Ape, an intelligent English speaking gorilla from the Disney film George of the jungle, as for the robotic arm I think I was inspired by Action Man villain known as Doctor X. Formerly I was just going to have the characters hand robotic, but changed my mind when my dad suggested it should be the whole right arm.

The reason why I call him Grill is because of after losing his right arm the top area of where his shoulder has scorched grilled burns.

To help find the correct style I wanted to produce my character with, I decided to look up similar character designs that have been used for animated TV series/films. For example since my character is a gorilla I have gathered a collection of inspiring characters such as Gorilla Grodd, Monsieur Mallah, Mojo Jojo, king Kong and Kerchak, along with others who have robotic limbs including Lightening Lad, John Silver, Clyde and Cyborg.

I have tried looking and producing styles outside the comfort zone but most of the styles that I came across in Pictoplasma didn’t feel right to portray my villainous no nonsense gorilla.

Apart from the traditional style that I mainly use for producing my characters I have also looked at the works of Pictoplasma artists such as Peter Thaler and Lars Denicke to help create other forms of my character in a new variety, even though most of them never appealed to my liking. Seeing that I wanted to make him look more like a realistic gorilla yet still have a little bit of a cartoonish look I settled on the style that was used by American animator Bruce W. Smith who used it for the Disney character know as Kerchak from film Tarzan. At first I was originally going to use Bruce Timm’s minimalist angular style that he used to produce the animated version of Gorilla Godd but felt that it didn’t quite go with the appearance I was going for. 

As for the arrangement of dynamic poses I had two techniques I used to help produce them there was copying poses from the hulk to display his super enhanced strength and two photos taken of myself for the sitting down position and the stance of shooting his machine gun.

For my final piece I produced an A2 model sheet with different poses, expressions, personality and biography of grill, along with a watermelon background to display his addiction for watermelons.

Overall I have found this module very interesting and challenging since it has allowed me to yet again bring forth another one of own personal characters creating him with the style that best portrays him and experimenting with variety of color tones for his hair. I hope to further progress these skills in similar future modules.