I've been struggling lately with the design of Huesos. He is the first character I'm making for the film, and what I picture in my head doesn't look at all to the different tests I've done.. maybe because in my head he looks 4 years of experience cooler than what I can do right now... with that said, I've done some "concept art" for him, just as a reference to guide my modelling and keep designing in 3D. Surprisingly, and shamefully (if that's a word) I'm faster at modelling than at drawing, and better too.. I suck at making concept art, I've gotten better, but I don't practice enough and I don't intent to make a huge leap on my skills just to design the characters... that's why I chose 3D, well I chose it for many more reasons than just because it has one more "dimension" than 2D, but the final product is going to be vectorized in three planes that cannot be faked by ME just using two and it's not necessary, again, for me. I will practice, later, I've no rush :)
My rush is to actually get the models done, hopefully texturized, to jump into rigging.. because the huge leap I do have to make before the end of summer is in my coding and rigging abilities, I want to have my two characters ready to animate, flexible enough to avoid major rigging needs once the storyboard is locked and my DOP is done with the layout. Also to have two good character for me to keep practicing animation!
The planning of Huesos (start here to skip the intro)
Now to the actual point of this post.
I already mentioned his personality, but I will summarize it here again:
- Funny
- Smart
- Mean
- Fast
- Very very confident
- The best of all agents
INSPIRATION
My inspiration, as I said in my first post, comes from the Mexican tradition of dead, but I've changed most of those traditional aspects; in reality the only thing visually related to the mexican image of dead is that he is an skeleton.
Here are some images that helped me shape him, and that inspired the look of the character:
This one is from a jazz band I found on Facebook, I don't know their music, but I liked the cover image.
The lady and the reaper. Oscar nominated film, from a spanish studio, I recommend it a lot! It has inspired many things in my film, so many that I'm working to avoid appropriation.. at least in an obvious way ;)
From mexican artist Carlos Ortega
PERSONALITY
I already mentioned it at the beginning of this post, but I will expand on it.
Huesos is a smart character, he breaks the rules because he knows how to do it, he is the best and can humiliate other agents and play with people.. just because he has the genius to do it. He is mean and groovy, like a genius blues trumpet player in the late 1950's... The groove of Ray Charles with the sarcasm of Gregory House.
Bonejangles is a good example.
House is a big inspiration for the personality of Huesos, specially for his philosophy of breaking the rules, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done.. and if it's fun it's even better. He likes to create challenges.
CUSTOME
Huesos' clothes are a big part of his personality. He is meant to be elegant but not too formal, always looking good but being comfortable. This is the part that has been causing me problems lately. I've done research about different types of suits, tuxedos, etc. I ended up deciding that the best influence for an agent, is another agent, at least in this case:
Daniel Craig, as James Bond.
He is going to be using a black suit, very formal and elegant, with a bow tie
a white shirt underneath, and probably the suit will be sleeveless.. I had many different tests for this, and decided that the best option was to have him showing the bones of his arms and just having the jacket of the suit, no pants or anything else, just a white shirt, black suit (just the jacket) and bones.. and the bow.
This is what I have so far, but I still need to decide what the final design is going to be, and it has to be soon. Any input would be very appreciated :)
Fernando
