The character

This is my initial character design sheet for the Christmas card. The first design I decided to throw away because I didn't think I wanted my character to be too young as young people would know what holiday it was. So I thought I wanted to make him an older, independent character who would have so much going on that he might not necessarily realise what point in the year it was. I t also allows me to incorporate the idea that consumers have Christmas forced upon them the second Halloween is over. Which I believe is one of the reasons  dislike Christmas. I amn't allowed to become excited about it in my own time. It is forced on me by advertising, Christmas specials in November, The German market in the centre of Edinburgh. It's inescapable! Erm sorry. Anyway that's why not him. At one point I was getting sick of trying to come up with a mature and independent character that appeared to be mildly dressed in a Halloween costume, so I decided to really go for it and Twinkie man was born. That was a sad day for me. The day my character looked the best dressed like a Twinkie. Next I thought maybe I should play around with a normal male, short back and sides appearance but with a twist on a Christmas jumper so I didn't have to work to hard on his shape. It just didn't feel right. So I thought maybe I should make him not give a shit but no that sent the wrong messade. Then finally I got it. He could be naturally orientated towards Halloween then he would appear just the right amount of Halloween although easily translatable to Christmas. Bingo!

So in developing my Christmas card. I decided I wanted some way to unify the entire cartoon from holiday to holiday but retain the shock of his realisation that in fact it is Christmas and not Halloween. I thought about doing the entire thing in just shades of blue, hence the blue shading above.

But it was pointed out to me that the shock of him walking into Christmas might be lost and I definitely don't want that. So then I thought two colours. Red and blue! It's so obvious now!
So here's where I went from there!

And basically I love it!

Bouncy Bouncy Part 2 - Ideas

The next stage to bouncy bouncy was to pick two materials that would significantly alter the trajectory of the bounce. When I started to investigate my options my first thought was what constitutes a significant change. I decided that a good change would be if it bounced lower or higher. Firstly I looked at lower.

I decided that heavier objects such as metal ball-bearings or solid plastics would bounce much lower so would lighter objects without much substance such as balls of paper or hairballs. I also decided wood wouldn't bounce much but I believe it would have bounced a bit more than these materials based on the kind of wood. 

 Then I began to think about other possibilities aside from weight such as gravitational pull, a different bounce trajectory and natural objects.

I liked the idea of the moon impacting in the ground however I felt that it didn't meet the expectations set in the project brief. It didn't bounce, it just hit the ground at great speed. I considered a pom pom because when I dropped one it very often bounced backwards. Which I thought was a clever idea but if that was the only difference then I wasn't demonstrating any skill. Finally I decided I liked the idea of the orange as there was a lot I could play about with. 

In addition I decided I liked the bouncy ball idea as it would bounce much higher and closer together than an ordinary bouncy ball.