Update 3/29/2021

Since the last update, We continued to work toward Melody’s final design. We created a list of physical traits we wanted to included on the character. From there, I resigned Melody to meet this criteria, and while it did differ from what I had already drawn before, the group liked what I had done.

I also came up with some concepts that would visually incorporate music into the underwater village like clotheslines and patio railings. I also had the idea of hanging lights that looked like music notes, which was well received by the group.

I even created a color palette for the storm, like I had already done for the island and the village.

As the team decided on blue eyes for Melody, I redrew the character’s head with blue eyes and I also liked the way I drew the ears. I looked at one of the cartoon cats in the Discord chat to get the ears right.

Around this time, Chas had started modifying his model of Melody’s head, and I also started modeling the body.

I also looked up alebrije versions of a rabbit, giraffe, elephant, and fox, since we were interested in making the village animals look like alebrijes with the patterns and line work.

At this point we have created a revised animatic for our short and we still have some revisions to work on. We might get into developing the visual style soon, and I can’t wait for it!