Continuing on with my characters I am still trying to distinguish their outfits and body shapes for the Astronaut and the Cosmonaut, and so have decided at this point that I might achieve this by using more harsher shapes of the Cosmonauts and straying away from real Cosmonaut suit designs to help make their uniforms more distinguishable from a distance. At this point I do feel I am slowing down with the characters and although I will keep on designing them, it might not happen until the Christmas time so I can focus on other projects as I feel I'm not getting where I want to go with them and I want to take a step back and think about what I'm doing so the design choices I make for them feel more meaningful, as at this point I feel m going round in circles and doing extra work that could be achieved if I'm more invested in designing them.

Continued on with my characters I finally decided to try and emphasis the heigh and size difference of the two astronauts, looking at the personalities of the characters and then trying to transfer it onto their body type. For the American Astronaut I decided to make him mores stocky and short to show that he's strong and more sprightly then the cosmonaut, but also not as smart and practical, by making his arms and shoulders bigger and giving him a smaller head. Meanwhile I decided to make the Cosmonaut more lanky, keeping his slender frame and making his legs a bit longer while also increasing his head size and making it more oval than the astronaut's so they are easier to tell apart. Overall I am happy with them, although I still think I need to work on the outfits better and maybe could push their designs a bit further.

Continuing on with the Astronauts and the companion we had to add on from the last lesson, I decided to continue looking at different breeds that might fit with the American astronaut and his body type to be used as shorthand for the audience when seeing them together. I decided to go with, at this point a chubby Dachshund, because I felt the size and weight of the dog matched the American Astronaut well enough, along with the matching uniforms as well. I will continue to look at other dog breeds that might be a good match for the Astronaut, but at this point I am happy with where this is going but feel I need to pay more attention to facial expressions for the astronauts and making their body features more dynamic and different, along with the robot.

Final Design Line Up  Cosmonaut Designs  Astronaut Character Designs   Finally finished the character designs for the astronauts and the robot, so I can move on with the designs and start adding colour and accentuate their features further to make them more distinguishable. I tried to make the rockets replicate the bodies of the astronauts, and then I will try and apply the same colour scheme to them, so they are, again more distinguishable from a distance, while I wanted the robot to still look like a tin man, but also look slightly sinister which is why I decided to extend his arms and not give him a face.

 Astronaut Further Development  Building Desgins  For this lesson we looked at exterior and interior spaces and how to draw them to show power, time period and scale. For my building I looked at the Lloyds Building in the London and had the task to make it appear ancient, so I decided to draw inspiration from greek architecture, incorporating friezes and columns where the exterior piping and boxy shapes would be, as well as putting in some renaissance domes where the boxes around the top where, as I felt it suited the style better, although it didn't portray the style of the ruling as well.  I also continued on with the designs of my astronaut, and at this point I'm feeling pretty confident about style and what the story of the two astronauts will be in preparation for storyboarding next week, I'm also at this point sure I'm settled on a robot and rocket design for the astronauts so now just need to finalise an outfit for the Cosmonaut and As...

USA Tin Man Astronaut USA Astronaut Rocket  Villainous Tin Robot!  USSR Tin Man Rocket Desgin To continue on with my astronaut character I decided to continue looking at the tin toy's and tried to combine them with the astronaut suit designs so they look more recognisable. For the individual characters I decided to take on advice given to me last lesson and look at two different body types to help tell the two astronauts characters apart, so I looked at chunky tin toys and combined them with the US Astronaut because I want him to be a clunky and clumsy, compared to the USSR Astronaut, whom I want to be more professional and faster, so I looked at thinner Tin toys (the ones that can fit inside Tin Toy vehicles) instead. As for the vehicles, I looked as different rocket designs from previous Tin Toy rockets and think at this point I have a few designs I might carry over and develop for the future, this also applies to the robot design which out of all th...

Tin Rocket Mood-board  Space Gadget / Vehicle Mood-board USSR Body type Mood-board USA Astronaut Mood-board  Robot Villain Mood-board  Moving on from last week, I have started to look at conceit for the character, and mine is Tin toys to add onto my astronaut character. I decided to make this batch of mood boards to help me narrow down designs that I could start producing, starting with the objects I would like to assist the astronaut such as a space ship, a space gadget (like a space bike, space tank, space racer, etc) that could make the story more fun and lighthearted, and for the last set I wanted to look at possible ideas for the villain. The idea for the Robot being a possible villain I got after a conversation about the characters trait, as the tin toys market was mainly producing a lot of robot toys and not a lot of aliens, so that seemed like the perfect choice for an antagonise within the story. I also briefly looked at different toy body si...

USSR Astronaut Suits  US Astronaut Suits  Continuing from last week I tried to draw more concepts of my Astronaut, looking more at different helmet and suit designs to see which one I might choose to stick with or adapt later on down the project, these designs I think mainly might be for my main astronaut character and then if I wanted to add another I will thumbnail some other outfit designs later. I also made these thumbnails to help me tell the difference between the US and the USSR astronaut suits, as at this point Im thinking about introducing a US and USSR astronaut into my story, and have a heavily re-imagined recalling of the space race between the two countries.

Continued doing research for my astronaut character, looking at more helmets and outfits to see what would suit the time period of the character and what I might want to use that might suit the characters personality. I'm still trying to stay in the 60's for the suits and the toy gun that I might want to accompany the character, so I looked at a range of various, older models and styles to give me a good range to explore and develop when I decide what I want the character to be.

In the second half of the lesson we had to apply the research skills we learned in the first half and put them towards practicing researching our assigned character. For my astronaut I decided to try and stick mostly to 1960's designs and research because thats the theme I will have to look at later on in the project so I decided that it would be easier to start looking at now so I wouldn't have to change the design later on down the project. At first I looked at helmets and suits, but then later I felt that the astronaut didn't have as much of a personality shining through the suit so I thought it might also be fun to look at 60's themes toys and items to present the era and the tone of the character more, as at this point I think I want them to be lighthearted and fun.