Hey Jake

So Meet Jake, well the first real charecter designs of Jake since writing the first draft of my script anyway. Jake will age thoughout the film so this is jake at 15/16 at the end of the film. I think that doing it this way will make things easy for me in the long run.

I like the way the charecter looks and the feel i get from him BUT he need work. he almost seems too cool, his face is soft but i feel as if its too still masculine.

Although i like the design the design of this charecter i still feel like its lacking and wouldnt quite fit the style of the film.

After weeks of scribbels. To protect the identity of person who's story jake is going to take part him i have taken what i've learned from studying transgender people and created the charecter you can see to the left.

JAke 2.0

Charecter design within this project has been alot harder than in the past, and i not 100% why.

I think it may be down to the fact that im out to create a charecter that look slightly more fememine but could easily be miskaken as male. As thats the gender that the charecter identifies with.

So after returning the drawing board i scrippled this little charecter during a demonstration to drawing on photoshop at work, one of the young people wanted to know how they would draw a person in uniform and thus Jake 2.0 was born.

I then flipped the charecter into negative and was like HEY! i like that... i like the two of them... but how could i use that.

My film is made up of a lot of transitions, where on finishes another begins. By producing the film in black and white it would allow me to use the charecter in these forms to jumped back and fore between dream sequences. So for example white and black would be real life and black and white would be within a dream.

Jin Kim

Jin Kim (김상진) is a Korean animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios since 1995, and is the first Korean to be working for Walt Disney Animation Studios. His works include character designs for most recent films such as The Princess and the Frog, Tangled,Frozen and Big Hero 6. During his early days as an animator, he animated works such as Hercules, Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove and Treasure Planet. He is most notable for creating concept designs and facial expression sheets for Disney characters.

He is also become one of my favourite people in the entire world and someone who I look up to quite a lot. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Kim at Annecy last year and as breif as our convocation was a really inspired me in developing my work since. Including the charecter development of Jake!

The development of jake

When developing Jake is a character I did this in three stages.

Firstly I did a selection of drawings just using line and simple black and white colour, done in a very sketchy way. And then put them in negative.

Then I improved the line work and filled with solid colour before one again putting the images in negative once they where complete.

Finially I added shading and again but it into negative.

From the three stages of character development I've just shown I have chosen to work with the first style presented. I really feel is of the sketchy style of these illustrations will fit the theme with it being told and drawn by a teenager. I intend on doing some test animation in this style butso far im very happy with my choose.

I will add a charecter sheet at a later date.