Unit 2.02- Character Design Rough Body Shapes

Having as title for my 1980's cartoon "Robot Pirates", and also having my cartoon idea pretty much developed, i decided to sketch out some body shapes for the different characters featuring in them.
These characters are: the villain, a old cunning robot who became the captain of the ship where the robots execute their acts of robbery and extortion of other ships, he is meant to command them as their leader.
A young pirate robot, who is tired of this type of life, and decides to revolt against the other robots.
For the sidekick, I had two options, it either would be a cute companion of our hero, who would help him in the most opportune times, or either a henchman for the Captain, this character would reflect the captain in strength, but not really in intelligence, he would be the right hand man of the captain, who would obey orders instead of giving them.
This question was arising until I started to draw the body shapes, where I found that the Captain having a henchman would be more appropriate, and a easier target for gags.

Villain shapes: Robot Captain


For these body shapes, I wanted to create a more cunning look Captain opposing to a strong one, my impressions of pirates lies in the idea that they are really clever and tricky , so I wanted to give that aspect to the Captain. For that I looked at characters such as Jafar from Aladdin , Captain Hook from Peter Pan, and Maleficent ( the Witch ) from Sleeping Beauty. Therefore, a more skinny and tall shape was what I was looking for.

The Hero: Young Robot Pirate

For my Hero, I wanted to demonstrate the youth in term of shapes, instead of having a square jaw strong character, I wanted a more humble and simple look guy. However, the shapes had to appeal the eye, so where the captain character design is based on hard edges, the hero have a more smooth shape, not only to look friendly but also to look young. Finally, I gave him a more human-like proportions, this was helped by Justin Wyatt, who taught us that often hero character from other races of specimens often have resemblance with human, for them to be more recognizable to the audience.

The Sidekick: A Brute Henchman Robot Pirate




For my sidekick, it was quite tricky, what actually started to be body shapes for heros and villains, turned into the body shape for the brute henchman, an over-toned and over-worked out muscle.

Having some body shapes down, I'm ready to develop them even further.

Finally, I will be adding a properly written synopsis, over the last couple of days, which will describe the whole main idea behind the cartoon.

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