Where There's an Ichabod...

 Surely there's a guy without a head....

Continuing in my reflection on the awesomest 12 weeks ever, I will show you the darker side of the first two weeks of Chris Sasaki's Advanced Character Design class at the Animation Collaborative. Chris assigned two characters for the course from Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

Previously I posted some reference images and beginning sketches of my process in trying to get a feel for who Ichabod was. Irving paints a very detailed picture of Ichabod, both physically and in personality. It's was a challenge to not be literal or, worse, re-create Disney's Ichabod, who is essentially Irving's description come to life. We had to dig a little deeper and extract the most prominent characteristics from the self-serving schoolmaster and make every effort to allow those characteristics to aesthetically exude from his design.

The Headless Horseman was quite the opposite. Not only vague in description, he is vague to the very narrator of the story and the characters within! Is he the ghost of a Hessian soldier? An apparition that materialized from superstition? Or was he really the town bully, Brom Bones, disguised to play one final, fatal prank on poor Ichabod?

This is the Choose Your Own Adventure book-like part of character design....so much fun. I personally liked the idea of the Headless Horseman as a mysterious apparition. I felt it would be more fun to play with both in story and visually in animation. A number of cool ideas came about in experimenting: what if he were a hulking, solid figure that dissipates into a hovering mist, giving him speed through vaporization? Or an ominous figure that shatters into thousands of blackbirds in flight? The possibilities were endless! 

Anywho, here are some reference images and beginning sketches and experimentations of The Headless Horseman!

Some Reference:

Aaaand Some Fun:

The incredibly challenging-but-fun magazine cutout method in which I learned to somehow gluestick myself to...myself.

Some finger painting with charcoal dust on (ugh) an Anthropologie bag. Sue me.

And now for some REAL fun with ink, straws, and maybe just a WEE bit of wine induced inhibition...

YES!! I mean seriously...way too much fun. More to come!! Please feel free to comment or make suggestions as this is all part of my portfolio building process. Thanks, ya'll!