COP3 - Development of designs

Expressions.

Here I developed some basic expressions for my characters. The main focus for the characters will be their eyebrows as they have strong eyebrows and I think it would be funny. I want my characters to have a simplistic design as the episodes will focus mainly on dialogue.

Further Development sketches.

Because I am still trying to get to grips with using a tablet, I found it difficult to draw original content in photoshop. I kept having to sketch out shapes on paper and then scan it in and draw over the top in order to keep my sketches consistent. 

Adding colour

I wanted to keep the tones quite warm for my characters as I want it the colours to juxtapose the content on the show that would deal with heavy subjects but in a light hearted way.

Final designs

This is the set of colours I decided to go with for my characters.

Overall, I feel as though I would be able to convey the emotions that I intended to do with these characters through the use of space and the characters themselves. Because I took a lot of content inspiration from Bojack horseman, I wanted to dedicate the show to entertainment as well as empathy that usually comes with UK families. 

COP 3 Poster

COP3 Character development

I decided to put together a brief bases for me to go off in order to develop my character designs. here I quickly mapped out the brief characters description. The mother character will be mysterious as she would only be spoken of.

This is my character description for Holly who is the oldest child out of the two. 

Joe Carmen works as a florist, his uniform will involve an apron much like a chef, which was what he wanted to be in his youth. He will play the typical strong father figure, but will also deal with dark personal issues that only the audience will see through the use of the one room being used throughout each episode.

Steve Carmen is the youngest sibling out of the two. His outfits will change each episode depending on what typical teenager phase he will be going through. In one episode he will be dressed in "chav" attire, and adopt a typical chav accent, another episode he will be dressed in a peaky blinders-esque outfit and have a brummy accent after binge watching the show etc. 

Moodboards.

This is joe's moodboard. I decided to base his looks off actors that have that sort of "dad" look about them. I also included floral designs as he works as a florist and I want his apron to have a similar pattern. 

This moodboard is for Holly Carmen. Because shes an art student, I want her to look and dress similar to what a "typical art student" would wear. I want the characters to have similar facial appearances as they are related. I will do this by giving them similar eyes and hair colour.

this is the moodboard for steve. I want him to look quite nerdy and like a scrawny, confused 14 year old boy. Because he will be going through phases like a teenager does, I included images that represent chavs as well as a few nerdy ones for the base of the character.

Initial character designs.

Joe.

Here are my initial sketches for joe. I want him to look quite angry to juxtapose his seemingly happy demeanor towards his children. Because I plan on having the animation look like traditional hand-drawn animation, but i will be creating this effect by using similar brushes in photoshop.

Steve

I wanted steve to look like a gaunt, scrawny teenager, with bad skin and strange hair. 

I want his outfits to change in every episode, so I will create different variations of his phases and outfits in photoshop.

Holly

I wanted Holly's face to have similar eyebrows to her dad in order to demonstrate that they're related. to make the characters look like they exist in the same world, I made their eyes similar as well as making the ends of the hair look siilar.

this was a quick sketch of what I wanted her body to look like. I will develop her outfits further down the line. 

my next step is to create different variations of my characters, like expression sheets as well as outfits. 

COP 3 - Character research and concept building

For my practical I want to create a set of character designs and some sort of pitch bible. I created some brief notes to help get the ball rolling on what exactly I wanted the show and characters to be like.

From my visual and contextual research on already existing animated sitcoms, I came to the conclusion that the shows revolve around family dynamics but the protagonist is usually a male father figure. The main point of my essay and practical is to challenge the dynamic of animated sitcoms but still conform in certain aspects. 

The plan is to have 6 episodes in the first season. I will mainly focus on what happens in the pilot episode because that will be what sets the tone of the show.  The idea is that the parents have split up and there will be a sense of mystery about why and where the mother is. the characters will know and hint throughout the first season as to where the mother is. Each episode will be 15 minutes long

I came up with the idea that because UK families value dinner time a lot that the episodes will be based around the dining table and focus on dialogue fueled by the main protagonist. I decided that the protagonist will be a young female character who's family dynamic mimics the common UK family dynamic. Her parents will be divorced and she will live with her dad rather than her mum in order to conform as well as challenge what the dynamic is when parents split up. Usually the mother has custody over the children, but I want to challenge this concept in this show. I want there to be a comedic vibe to the show but I also want there to be some relatable aspects as well. Because it's common for parents to split up in the UK, I want there to be a sense of a broken family but they find solace in humour and each others company in order to support my essay that challenges how comedy is presented through animated sitcoms.

I want the aesthetic of the characters and show to be individual but still readable in the sense that it's not too outlandish so it distracts from the dialogue. I decided that the families last name would be "Carmen", a play on words for "common" as they are meant to be representations of a common UK family.

COP 3 - practical - research

For my practical response I will put together a set of character designs that will be for an animated sitcom, similar to classic like The Simpsons, Family guy and other popular, modern animated tv shows. However, my characters will live in the UK and be representations of what a uk based family is. My reason for doing this is because from my initial research, I found that there is a lack of successful UK based animated sitcoms.

here I put together a quick moodboard with images of popular animated sitcoms for me to take inspiration from. my main animations that I will be taking inspiration from are shows like The simpsons and Family guy as they are similar is content and are also two of the most successful animated sitcoms to date.

I also decided to do some factual research that revolved around the idea of a UK family. I looked at statistics to help me gain an understanding as to what uk families view as vital family time.

• In 2016 there were 18.9 million families in the UK.
• There were 12.7 million married or civil partner couple families in the UK in 2016. This was the most common type of family.
• Cohabiting couple families were the fastest growing family type between 1996 and 2016, more than doubling from 1.5 million families to 3.3 million families.
• In 2016, around 25% of young adults aged 20 to 34 were living with their parents, increasing from 21% in 1996.
• In 2016, around 7.7 million people lived alone in the UK, the majority were women.
• “In 2016, married or civil partner couple families remained the most common type of family in the UK although cohabiting couple families were the fastest growing family type over the last 20 years. The growth in cohabiting couple families may be due to couples choosing cohabitation as an alternative or precursor to marriage”.
• Pamela Cobb, Population Statistics Division, Office for National Statistics
• A family is a married, civil partnered or cohabiting couple with or without children, or a lone parent, with at least one child, who live at the same address. Children may be dependent or non-dependent.
• A household is one person living alone, or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room, sitting room or dining area. A household can consist of more than one family, or no families in the case of a group of unrelated people.
• Dependent children are those aged under 16 living with at least one parent, or aged 16 to 18 in full-time education, excluding all children who have a spouse, partner or child living in the household.
• The families and households estimates are based on social survey data from the April to June  quarter of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) household dataset.

• *Married couple families include both opposite sex and same sex married couples. Cohabiting couple families include both opposite sex and same sex cohabiting couples
• Families without dependent children have only non-dependent children or no children in the household
• Lone parent families grew by 18.6%, a statistically significant increase; married couple families grew very little (0.3%), not a statistically significant increase, over the 2 decades.
• Of the 2.9 million lone parent families in the UK in 2016, the majority (86%) were headed by a female lone parent, the remaining 14% were headed by a male lone parent. These percentages have changed little over the 20 years since 1996. This could be associated with women being more likely to take the main caring responsibilities for any children when a relationship breaks down and therefore becoming lone parents.
• In 2016, of all lone parents with dependent children, 55% had only 1 child, higher than both other family types shown in Figure 3. Further, only 13% of lone parents had 3 or more children. Conversely, married couples with dependent children had more children on average than other family types and only 39% had only 1 dependent child. These patterns are likely to reflect the stability of parental partnerships, as well as the fact that people often marry after having a child and then have further children within marriage; this is demonstrated in the registration status at birth statistics.
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• “Mealtimes reflect UK Family life”
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• "We stick together," she says. "We're a unit of individuals."
• "We always eat breakfast together," she says. "It tends to be the only time we're always together." 

From this research, I understand that UK families typically favour meal times as a fundamental and key time for their families to socialise, much like in the US, sitting in front of a tv as a family is commonly seen as "family time", (much like the couch gags in the simpsons).

This research helped me come up with a concept for my animated sitcom, where it will be based around a dining table. Because of how high the divorce rate is in the UK, this has given me the idea to focus on one character who will switch half way in the episode to go visit the other family. the two seperate families will be distinctly different. The set up of the episodes will be based around the dining table which will allow for a lot of dialogue and will focus mainly on the characters dynamic and how they communicate and "function".