The learning goals for this assignment are to become familiar with different ways of representing character, explore the practical implications of Wells’ “bestial ambivalence”, and strengthen observational and imagination-based drawing skills.

In your Animal Book, design a minimum of three different characters using different styles.  The first two styles are required.  Choose the third style from options 3 – 5.  For efficiency’s sake, I suggest you do these in the order listed.

All of your process must be evident in your Animal Book.  Label each part of the exercise with its style, and list the different styles in the table of contents. The completed assignment is due in workshop Tuesday, April 24.

1.              “Pure animal” (required):  Take a few pages of your Animal Book to draw a dozen or so quick gestural studies of different positions and attitudes that you have observed your animal in.  Next simplify your animal so that you can more easily animate it while still keeping a sense of its individuality and actuality.  Create a full-page model sheet showing the “pure animal” character in a minimum of 6 different positions.

2.              Traditional Character Animation or Disney style (required):  From the gesture studies you did in #1, use a couple of pages of the Animal Book to develop a structure for a cartoon animal based on simple shapes that has “appeal.”  Take into account the rest of Disney’s 12 principles and the idea of “plasmaticness.”  Next, take a few pages of your Animal Book to experiment and decide on what type of character (what role, what age, what position in a moral hierarchy, its name) it might be.  Draw a dozen or so quick gestural studies of positions and attitudes that express this personality.  From those, create a full page model sheet that shows the structure of the character and a minimum of 6 poses that express who it is.

3.              Cartoon Modern style (first option):  Base this design on the work you did for either #1 or #2.  Use a couple of pages to play with ways to simplify and abstract that character into a more “modernist” one.  Does this new version suggest different personality traits or meanings?  Take a page of your Animal Book to draw a dozen or so quick gestural studies of positions and attitudes that tell us something about this new character.

4.              Idiosyncratic style (second option):  Base this design on the work you did for either #1 or #2.  Use a couple of pages to experiment with representing the animal character using your own native drawing style.  Does this new version suggest different personality traits or meanings?  Take a page of your Animal Book to draw a dozen or so quick studies of different positions and attitudes that tell us something about this new character.

5.              Self-portrait as animal (third option): Base this design on the work you did for either #1 or #2.  Use a couple of pages to play with ways to integrate indicators of your own identity into the animal character.  Take a page of your Animal Book to draw a dozen or so quick gestural studies of positions and attitudes that tell us something about this character.