Character Design for Animation

Designing a character – Hopping Mouse character design

During the last few weeks, I have been drawing, drawing, drawing, to get this character design done! I have sketched out this mouse character so many times, to the point I felt like I was getting nowhere. I was never happy with what I came up with for a design.  I showed some colleagues of mine of my designs and sketches and they all seemed to like it. But why didn’t I? So I took a break for a few days and let my mind clear and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. It did help.

I wanted to keep the character design simple obviously, for animation purposes, but never was happy with the way the design was going. I needed simplicity, but also detail. It was a challenge to design a character as simple as possible but with enough detail so it’s not plain and dull. In the image pictured below, the hopping mouse at the top are the latest designs, which I am fairly happy with. I tried to use curves against straights to make the hopping mouse more appealing and stylised. For example, long straight nose bridge at the top of the head and a slight S curve for the bottom jaw. It gives the character more contrast in shape and I think a more interesting silhouette.

Overall, I quite like this character design and I think I will stick with it for the time being. Character design is a challenge. You have to free your mind up and create from your imagination and I enjoy that a lot. Also, it is a challenge to character design something unique and original.

Some more character designs and poses

Here are some more character designs of the hopping mouse and some poses. The sketch of the character with the squiggly tail happened during an earthquake. Interesting!

Keep up to date and follow the progress of this project.
Go to Project Page

Tools used

These sketches are done using Sketch Book Pro. A really great software from Autodesk which makes sketching fun and easy and a Wacom Cintiq.