Character Design- Mail Man

Between my brother and I, we have decided that I will concentrate on designing the Mail man, and Nathan will design the actress. We plan to produce sketched designs, colour tests and fully sculpted Maquettes.
Throughout the stages of designing the characters we'll consult with each other to make sure we're both happy with the designs and that they're the best we can make them. They also need to work well with each other with a consistent style so that they look like they belong in the same universe.

Here are a few rough design sketches for the Mail Man. Many of these sketches are trying to capture the look of horror on his face after he realises be may have just delivered a bomb.

The designs on this next page are closer to the characters final design. He will will be dressed in a blue mail uniform and have a leather satchel and hat. I thought a slender figure would work well with this character since he will be frantically moving about in the film trying to recover the bomb. The long limbs will help to exaggerate his movements.

The sculpted portrait above was sculpted to see how the designs works in 3D. The sculpt is larger than what the final puppet's head will turn out to be. I  have also started working on a full body maquette of the character which will be sculpted to the correct scale of the final puppet. I find maquettes very useful when designing characters, especially for stop motion, since the characters have to work in the 3rd dimension. They're also very useful to help judge the scale and volume of the final puppets and sets.
Here are the beginnings of the sculpt. aprox 11 inches tall, plasticine.

and finally, a shot of the Mail Man sculpt next to Nathan's Actress sculpt. Work in progress.