Marmot Designing

So Davids also asked me to do some sketches for the marmot in case he doesn't get round to it in time, and wanting some concept work for my folder, i don't mind doing some.

I do not feel my drawing is up to much, and so i've been practicing with life drawing on the train to and from college and looking at cartooning animals.

I have also looked at artists such as Preston Blaire to try and help with the line and making them look good.

The initial sketches I Scanned into my Laptop and went over them in Photoshop to try and get good concepts out of it.....

This is my favorite, which is why its first...... Ive spent most of the weekend on sketching and design for the marmot....

Ive tried to get different poses that would be related to the film in these sketches.






This design is very cute and I've used Preston Blaire's Cartoon Animation book to get some of these poses.

I quite like this design, the eyes are really big, and his head is a weird shape. The body looks pretty bog standard, and so to get some design in the marmot could change a bit more to it.

Ive spoken to David and hes unsure about this design..... He does look a bit more like a Dog though...

This concept cam from what david gave me as an idea for roughly what he should look like, but these are very similar to my first ideas, so i want to try and push him a bit more..

Here are the initial sketches for the marmot i did in blue pencil and went over in black pen.

His eyes might be too small, and making him look cute rather than cheeky like we need him to.....

Here are some facial expressions, the nose may need to be more rounded. This will come in useful with blendshapes, if we pick the main expressions we need....

Experimenting with Marmot colours, From the reference videos and Pictures of Marmots I Colour palliated in Photoshop and Picked the colours actually on the marmots to get some of the colours working well together.... I personally like the Forth, But David wants something a bit darker, nearer to the last colour idea...

These are drawings of initial ideas for shapes for the marmot character.... The debate at the moment is will he run on two legs or four....

For rigging and Animating purposes, as a team we decided he might run on two. That way he can also hold the piece of chicken in his hand rather than his mouth....

The sketches below are poses taken from the photographs and video references I found online. Just getting a feel for that marmot....