The Bandit

So, I'm in charge of making the Bandit character for our short film experiment. In the spirit of trying new things, I'm taking a bit of a different approach to making my character. We have talked of style inspirations of Batman, Team Fortress 2, Disney's Atlantis, Aladdin, and I think a few other places of inspiration for design.

My approach to design is going to be doing a lot of study of our references, and with some vague ideas of the proportions I want and some details jump into Maya and start sculpting. So far, I know I want him to be very skinny because as a true bandit, he is like a coyote and doesn't have a constant supply of food. From his skinniness, I want him to have big hips that protrude like a cow's hips. I think he's going to have a lot of belts and mismatched clothes. He'll have typical Bandit-o fare of a handkerchief, but I'm debating if it should be over his mouth or not.

Character-wise, he's definitely a lone wolf, used to having to do things by himself and therefore not very trusting of many people, or even himself for that matter. His actions are quick and to the point. As a kid all he wanted to do was become a sheriff one day, but a string of bad luck took him on a different path.

I'll post more of my studies and progress as I go:

-John

Sheriff Progress

Here are my reference drawings and my current work-in-progress on my model. I haven't touched it in a while, but plans are to do the hands next. I'm really slow at this.

The idea for this guy is that he's the law enforcer of the town, obviously, but he tends to be on the strict side. He might be a little power hungry and would probably use unnecessary force. That dynamic would make a nice middle-ground where the viewer could side either with him of John's character, the bandit, depending on how the story unfolds.





The last set of images are old, just to show the blocking for the body.

Lady Character Design

Here is my character design for the lady. Modeling to begin tomorrow. We are keeping personalities rather skeletal, so that the story can stay fluid. No name yet.