Character Design Research
Pictured: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Dexter’s Laboratory, Craig McCracken’s Powerpuff Girls, Butch Hartman’s Danny Phantom
For this project I would like to make the designs of my character a lot more shape related, as this approach worked well on my previous project. The above designs of characters for televisions shows all have very distinct shapes and line work.
The characters of Dexter’s Laboratory all have distinctive shapes of each part of their bodies, even down to their feet and their footwear. Dexter and Dee-Dee don’t even inherit many traits of their parents into their designs, staying uniquely designed from them.
Professor Utontium of Powerpuff Girls is made up of squares and rectangles, with his especially rectangular face and long jaw. This contrasts against the all curved circles and points of the Powerpuff Girls and makes him stand out as the older character. It also suggests aspects of his character, being firm but fair fittingly for their father figure.
Butch Hartman’s designs for most of his shows have characters with very rectangular body shapes and heads which taper to a curved point at the chin. The hair, too, also strikes the balance of angle and curves, in the pictured example, Danny Phantom’s hair is angular towards the back but his fringe curves downwards and back up to another sharp point.