PreViz and Character Design

To really get a feel for the characters and to understand what i am going to be portraying, it is important to work all the goodies before you jump into film-making. In some cases it may help to actually write out a character description (bear in mind that I was attempting to recreate a battle between two seals and not infuse an artificial character into them, so my approach is different then a character description for someone who is doing a serious character growth in say a drama), here is mine:

Character Description: Elephant Seal

The elephant seal is known to be one of the largest seals in the world. Seals can grow to lengths of over 16 feet and weigh in excess of 11.000 pounds. Male bulls are more than double the size of the females and are recognizable by their large elongated nose that overhangs their lower lip, almost trunk-like. The male bulls are extremely aggressive, foul tempered when aggravated, and demonstrate dominance by expressing large vocal displays and charging at each other to fight for control of breeding and territorial rights. Fights between males are usually brief but inflict large amounts of damage by trusting their large canines (that can grow up to 8 inches long) and colliding blubber with one another to inflict damage. Their bodies usually show the scars and deep wounds of past confrontations. The seals although large and seemingly immobile, have the ability to dive to depths of 5,000 feet below the surface to hunt for various fish and squid to sustain their dietary needs. They spend a lot of time at sea and during mating seasons they bask in enormous numbers along coastal shorelines.

The film will focus on the natural behaviors and aggressions of these mammals in particular. In describing their personality traits, I felt it appropriate to merely describe their physical features and behavioral patterns. The behavior and character of the animals will be true to their natural instinctive movements and not characterized in another fashion. Only characterization will be of the actual form of the character as interpreted by my stylizing of their forms. Smaller characters will also be introduced in the film but not important enough to describe the patterns of behaviors or physical characteristics, they will merely serve as secondary action.

After getting down the basics of the animal, it was time to explore it artistically. I personally enjoy to draw and sculpt, and therefore, took both avenues as a method of exploring the design of these animals to be in my stylization but still in their likeness. Having used scratchboard or clay-board before, i figured i would do some work on this material, since i would be scratching and would be able to get my technique down before jumping onto film with the designs. i also have done some maquette work in Sculpey before and thought it would be fun to model an elephant seal in clay as a reference and study to look back at for my film.

PREVISUALIZATION (Click Images To Enlarge)

Here are some scratchboard/clay-board studies:

Here is the maquette: