Character Design

Character design is always an interesting part of the production and yet I found this one of the most difficult tasks of this project. At first it sounds easy to create a cowboy named Trinity but as I progresses I realised that no matter what I drew, I still ended up with a Clint Eastwood lookalike.

I wanted to move away from the cliche cowboy gunslinger character and look more deeply into the personality and traits of the characters as individuals. I tried to think alot about the performance I could portray with different characters. I thought back to Ed Hooks' masterclass and tried to show that the characters had a goal and constantly changing their actions to reach their objective. I wanted to create characters that we as the audience could empathise with, regardless of them being 'good' or 'bad characters.

Again I give Clint Eastwood as an example to how a character with a certain personality can be portrayed.



He has a cigarillo constantly in his mouth while he works, he generally has a very mysterious personality as someone 'new in town'. Very rugged clothing, a warm sheep skin vest to keep him warm shows he spends alot of time outdoors as he needs to stay warm at night in the desert. His poncho can be used to conceal his pistol which he never goes anywhere without showing that he is someone who is always followed by or goes looking for trouble. In the days of the old west people could tell where a cowboy was from simply by his hat, if the brim was wide that often meant that he came from somewhere where the sun is very strong and constant.

Instead of looking at Trinity as Jonathan was already doing the designs for him, I decided to look at one of the bounty hunters and thought of a personality to give him. I thought of of using a real person as a basis of my characters personality and this is what I came up with.

Using the personality of one of my friends I took some of his qualities:

- Often drunk and abit out of control
- Never EVER takes anything serious
- Enjoys pushing the situation to the limit
- Doesn't take jokes as well as he can hand them out

I thought this would be an interesting approach to a character and did a few sketches however we as a group decided our characters and mine was not picked.



The character of Trinity was eventually decided to be created by Mohammed. I really like this character as he really does have a no nonsense look about him. Again the influences of Clint Eastwoods character can be seen in this character with hat and the use of a poncho.

The idea for the bounty hunters was to have one big who was really the muscle and one small who was the brains of the two, much like the characters of Rocky & Mugsy from Looney Toons.



For these bounty hunters, money making is their objective. They notice Trinity has the traits of someone running away from whoever and see it as a way of making a couple of bucks. When they find out who he actually is they realise they are in danger and as a response to their need for survival they try to shoot him.