Final project: concept / character design / final version

The first thing I though of when I saw the painting of 'Saint Catherine of Alexandria' by Carlo Crivelli was how it reminded me of Magritte's 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (this is not a pipe). Crivelli painted a real size fly next to a 30cm tall saint, and to me both of these artists were playing with the same ideas of reality and representation. That's where I got my title, 'Ceci n'est pas une mouche' (this is not a fly), which makes a reference to Magritte at the same time that it captures the playfull tone of the story. Here's a link to the painting by Crivelli at the National Gallery website: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng907.1


These are some of my tests for character designs. I tried everything, from tall and short, fat and thin, young and old. I tried several kinds of head shapes, legs, arms, hands, noses... I probably have more than a hundred versions. But at one point it all started going in one direction that I felt would be more suitable for how cartoony I wanted it to look, and it had to be a design that would work in 3D. I also explored some different situations and emotions along the way. These are a few of these tests:













This is my final character design in 3 different views:



And this is what it looks like in the final 3D version. I did the modeling, and my mentor, to whom I'll be eternally grateful, did the rigging for me.