So the planning and ideas for Lil' Mo and Dukdik's story has developed quite a bit...
Here's Lil'Mo
And Here's Dukdik...
Originally the title was 'What's on the Other Side of the fence...?
But this seems a bit too wordy, not easy to remember and not very rhythmic to say. Sot it changed to firstly 'what's that Noise? (too formal)
and finally "Wots that Noise?"
Which has more punch!
I then started working on their personalities, working out what drives them.
Here's DukDik:
And here's Lil'Mo:
With these ideas in mind I worked on their facial features in 'typical' moods and emotions:
These are still quite rough but I really like the differences in their ears. Dukdik'd upright pointed triangles and Lil'Mo's equilateral triangles that shift around according to his moods.
Quick sketches
Dukdik's face is essentially a cube with pointed upright triangle ears and a triangle pointed nose
And Li'Mo is a sphere with two equilateral triangles and a triangle flat nose with a kind of rounded bottom shaped W
Then there is also the cone...
Duk Dik's body is a rectangle box with three legs (front left is missing)with a springy curled tail.
And Lil' mo is more of an elongated kidney shape with four long legs and a fluffier curled tail.
The missing leg has a scar that looks a bit like the 3i Ohm sign.
Lil' Mo has 4 white socks as well.
After a while I felt the stories needed the occasional appearance of Billie the cat, as she is so much part of their story in real life:
She is a tabby can and her markings will present something of an issue in repeated drawings so I played around with possibilites of simplifying and controlling the design.
She has a great fingerprint like markings on the centre forehead. I decided this could work as a swirl.
She has kind of stockings and I wanted to play with this in her design.
Along with the stripey rings on her tail
She is naturally very flexible and there is a lot of possibilities with the stripes helping to exaggerate the different positions. Together the three designs can be quite fun:
I started thinking about their world, which is initially always dictated by the fence/gate barrier onto the outside world.
I then began to experiment with their runs. Dukdik's being quite and unusual gait:
This first attempt was also an experiment with using Animator desk on my iPad and using an iPad pen. It was OK but it seemed quite hard to draw detail with as it is hard to be precise. The onion skinning worked but the image did do the gradual warp with things growing and shrinking. But for a basic tester it was fine.
I haven't got around to testing Lil' Mo's run yet.
Finally I have started to work on a rough outline for the beginning of each episode. This is very likely to evolve but her is the first outline and a rough thumbnail storyboard:
That's all for now.... this has been a few months working here and there to this point....more to come.
