The Evolution of a Character: Salah

When I was getting interested in animation, I always knew that in order to be an animator, you have to also be a character designer, the problem is that I really don't know how to design a character. I can envision the character in my head, but the problem is transferring that thought into a character. I love characters, but creating that design of the look of the character can be quite challenging. Anything in animation takes many many drawings, sketches, paintings, doodles, pastel work, and great ideas. In the middle of last year, I was thinking about story ideas for some animation films that I can develop, and I came up with this great idea for a story. I am working right now on small things such as pencil tests, but once I get good at animation, I will start animating it. It is set in Arabia and needed a strong character to carry the picture. So I start sketching a character known to be Salah. My First sketches of Salah, you can see that I was trying many ideas.

An interesting problem that I had was to try to be as original as possible. It was really hard to step away from other work and do my own thing. In the early 90's a film came out from Walt Disney Animation Studios as we all know as "Aladdin". My favorite animator is Andreas Deja who animated the main villain in the film, Jafar. The design on that character is so good that it was hard to come up with my own ideas.

Some other Ideas for the design

Jafar has so many great stylized details in the design that it was hard to stay away from it

At that time I haven't watched Aladdin in a while so I popped in the dvd, grabbed a sketchbook and started watching. I doodled many expressions that Jafar was expressing in the movie

After the film, I went back into my studio and started drawing

In this particular drawing, the clothes, earring, and hat wasn't original, but the face was getting somewhere Then I drew the same drawing more cleaner and in the style of a model sheet.

I started designing the hat and wardrobe in quick scribbles.

I found the hat design that I wanted and finalized a new drawing

This particular drawing isn't the final design, I am still going to try making it even more creative, but it shows that designing a character is a fun part in the Animation Process.