Colab Project: Big Guy

This was a character design for a colab project we had to do within a week, The story we adapted was from a short film, called Be My Brother, link down below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d-7IFN4DKA

If you don't feel like watching the video here's a short summary:

The premise was that of two brothers who are waiting at a bus stop and the younger brother was mentally handicapped with the older brother ignoring him. The younger brother would talk to this woman sitting on the bench and charm her with his knowledge of T.V. facts and music. The older brother would keep on ignoring him and the younger brother would have his feelings hurt, in the end the older brother acknowledges and they embrace each other.

In our colab project we were task to adapt a story to animation, we ended up making the time era different by setting it in the 1950s and instead of the brothers being white we turned them black and made the problem a racial issue in where the younger brother is talking to a white woman but manages to charm her despite the older brother frowning upon this.

We decided that the younger brother needed to look innocent and someone at first glance you wouldn't think would be so charming.

I did various rough sketches and decided to make him a big guy in contrast to his brother who would be a skinny guy with an average height. For John Coffey from The Green Mile as inspiration for making a gentle giant. I went through a couple of roughs till I settled on my final design.

I wanted him to look confident and by looking at his face, you knew he was a nice man, almost kid like.