Pre-production

Initial designing process

 

   

From the very beginning of the project I had my heart set on doing Biffo, I believe. I wanted to work with something anthropromorphic because I've seen it so much in other animated media but never pursued any sort of animalistic designs myself. Also, bears are my favourite animal so I was incredibly biased when it came to picking in that sense too. I did also do a design for Pansy Potter but she didn't resonate with me as much. I happened to have a decently clear idea of what I wanted my narrative to be from the moment I picked Biffo. With one of his defining characteristics being he's unappealing to look at and an odd design choice to make him so ugly, I wanted to play on that further and have my whole animation being about how ugly he is. I tried my hardest to incorporate classic, childish, slapstick humour that is so reminiscent of The Beano and did a lot of reseach on Biffo himself. I decided to have a story about him trying to 'find his smile' so to speak and chaos insuing everywhere he tries to show it off.

Research

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Storyboard

 

 

 

Biffo Design

 I decided on this design for Biffo, sort of reminiscecnt to an Adventure Time character, blocky and easy to look at and animate. I kept his classic outfit, and made him overall more bear-like, instead opting to have his ugliness be a plot point and not just an overlying design choice.