The Boy's design has been quite a task. I think it's near ending now. I think He's pretty defined, so lets document that.
I think this is how the design of the Boy started for the film. Just carrying buckets of liquid rainbow. I admit, I didn't really like the design of this boy, but He was more a placeholder for a concept being carried out.
This then led onto this, seeing I had a boy, or intentionally, originally two boys in the film, this drawing was made to involve a girl in the story instead of another boy and is a really nice image of two carrying four buckets with a makeshift pole as two tied up brooms. As I type this, the Girl is still an option and does explain why there isn't so much work put into the OTHER Boy. The Girl could increase the overall target audience.
This is the first appearance of the Spikey design of the boy, to try to divert away from my normal style. Obviously at first glance it doesn't work, but once again, illustrates a concept of a boy selling liquid rainbow as a homemade soft drink. It's here that the Old Man takes a swig of the drink and the effects of the substance are first shown, which then attracts the Press.
This is more of the Spikey Haired Boy, to be honest, this design is still majorly lacking and the form and shape is all kinds of messed up, I don't know where to begin, the foreshortening is terrible. At this point I was looking at Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes.
I then tried minimalising the boy's design and making him seem constructed out of less lines, like the UPA style and made is hair like a slightly spiraled star to fit with his spiral half completed head.
At this point, I was watching a rather lot of Herge's The Adventures of Tintin TV series from the early 90's on DVD, I was giving that look a try with the boy. I don't think this worked at all.
Here I started getting more of a simplier design of the boy, but it seemed far to obvious and not divergent away from my style, again.
I soon moved on to making the Boy look more adventurous, So I gave him a rucksack and a baseball cap. This worked, but I forgot all about foreshortening, He looked like an early teen.
I tried 'Squaring' the character up (I think I invented that word) so He could be built easier, problem is, by changing the line, I soon discovered, this boy didn't look so adventurous.
This ended up looking like a design I had in my head for a series that I've been thinking of in the works called 'Project Wallcapers' and I may apply it to that instead as it may be more appropriate. Anyway this didn't seem to work and would be very difficult to animate with, again, it looked to rigid like the way I drew anyway.
This was drawn because it was nearing Christmas at this point and it was snowing a lot. This design, or the basic look got put onto a bag in the end, long story.
And then this happened. Something that broke all the rules about the Boy, the age, the height, you name it, but for a brief while I could actually imagine this as the Boy, how stupid I was at that time.
Then the Curly Boy approach appeared. He kind of worked and looked minimal in a Gerald McBoing Boing sort of way.
As you could tell by the arrow I quite liked this one...but then...attack of the subconscious! I realised that this was very similar to a recent film I saw and was FAR too inspired by it. 'The Stupid Table'
This wasn't a direction I was going to continue moving in. Last thing I wanted was my signiture character looking like a lead character from a film I saw at Bradford Animation Festival just a few months before.
This boy about to be hit by a comet was also a brief candidate.
This page of nonsense had a lot of potential boys for the role. For example, I quite liked the one in the bottom left with the 3 sideways spikes. But a lot were whittled down from this sheet.
This was a start. Here I started looking at simplistic rounded heads again. It kind of worked but He had no character.
Adding a bit of details onto that basic above design paid off. I got a boy in a raincoat, but however, still not simplified enough. I also quite liked his hair, but that too was a bit of an old habit, that quite frankly, needed to die for this project.
Then I blended both the above look and the curly haired boy to create this picture which depicts just after the weather change takes place.
As slight variation on that previous look, this time making the 'Other Boy' a girl, in this instance, I don't think it was obvious enough to see that the one on the right was a girl.
Making the head a bit rectangular again made this and his body was beginning to take shape, then it became a bit smooth around the edges, but still made oblong with a complementary Tenth Doctor on the page, which was spawning off another side project I was meaning to get around to.
This was the next phase when I definitely wanted the Boy to have a cap as it added character.
I'm not really sure what happened here, but it was a nice style of face to aim at. I feel really sorry for him here, as if He's a pauper.
One day, this sudden magical look happened. I was trying to make the character look as if he was built out of very simple shapes, like Gerald McBoing Boing and other kids in UPA shorts, Google Images and the Cartoon Modern blog really helped out here.
I started really messing about with this shape and seeing how I contort it and the faces I could give the Boy. It wasn't quite right yet.
This pose gave the character something. Almost jazzhands, but aside from that, his slanted 'A' shape design seemed to really work, I thought perhaps that should be incorperated into his build due to the fact in all the previous designs, He looked pretty shy.
And so this jazzhand cheeky look was put onto the ovalish head, but with the same form, because at this point I was learning a LOT from Rad's How To Blog
This rough model sheet was created shortly afterwards. Now I was mainly experiementing with his eyes, but certainly giving him a jacket.
That pose with all the arrows around it was a version of the Boy built with simple form construction lines which acted as his spine. I love his expression as He looks up at the rainbow, this was the guy. Now the rest remained, I considered him fully designed, it was just seeing what his design was capable of.
I tried giving him the 'Pacman' eyes. (Funny how I name them that, because they existed far before Pacman) This look seemed to work, but as you can see, you can probably guess, I made his head too big. I was looking at some Flechier Bimbo model sheets at this time and the look was rubbing off a bit.
The Retro eyes worked on the second try perfectly anyhow.I got addicted to the creases of his feet, making sure this guy could tip toe into a factory. For some odd reason, here He is playing Hopscotch, which He doesn't actually do in the film.
The eyes staying, I made a quick pose to look as if the boy was eaves dropping and at the same time, tried giving Him an ear. I'm still quite unsure of that.
Still with an ear, the boy sneaking with a slight shadow behind him. I really don't like that ear.
And Here he is with a slightly rounded head (ignore that) with a teapot on a tightrope, sometimes I love my mind.
Here's what I consider to be the prime example of everything that exemplifies the Boy to date and yes, He is a real character.Updated - 10/Feb/2010
Original Editing date - 07 Feb 2010 -
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