Trip to The National Media Museum

I took a trip with college to The National Media Museum in Bradford. We went to a talk by video game industry leaders at Creative Assembly (the Total War Series) about the marketing of video games. While there we were able to walk around the animation exhibition that had a lot of sets from various British animations. There were sets from Andy Pandy, Wallace and Gromit, Morph and The Wombles. I think I enjoyed the meusem part of the trip more, though I enjoyed the talk thanks to me being a fan of Creative Assembly's work.

Character Designs Through Time

• As part of my college work I was tasked with creating character in the style of different era's. In order we have: 1920's, 1950's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, Modern and future.

• (1920's) I started out by looking at iconic cartoon characters from the 1920's like Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse. This inspired my monochrome and cartoony look for my first character. I also went with a 20's mobster look and my character is also sporting a 1920's Thompson Sub Machine Gun.

• (1950's) I then moved on to the 50's and created a character with a similar look though slightly more advanced using some basic colour for the crocodile skin. His outfit and hair style was inspired by photo's of 50's Greasers.

• (1970's) My 70's character is heavily inspired by the Band Kiss as found the king cobra sticking his tongue out reminded me of them. I used a lot of line variation on this piece as it was the in style of the time.  

• (1980's) For the 80's I looked at the shows I remember watching when I was growing up. This meant a lot of He-Man and Thunder Cats. I wanted to make a character that both looked like they would belong in one of those shows and make a cool action figure.

• (1990's) For my 90's character I was inspired by cartoons of the era that were trying to become the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Shows like Street Sharks and Extreme Dinosaurs.

• (Modern) When I came to do my modern character I wanted to ape the style of shows like Adventure Time and The Regular Show by creating a very cartoony character with thin limbs and a rounded body.  

• (Future) For my finale character i wanted to revisit my first character and try and rework the style I used to create them. This was inspired by the upcoming Mickey Mouse cartoon which has revisited his older style and themes. I can see a lot of companies doing this in future.