Character Design - Cerberus

Did I mention we have ourselves Cerberus in this as well? We have ourselves Cerberus.

Cerberus is the Styx's resident Hellhound, a three-headed monster of fury, spittle and malice. Well, most of the time. Cerberus may be a demon, but under all that he's still just a dog. His job is guarding the entrance to Hell, but he's also at the beck and call of several denizens of the underworld - all they need do is whistle for him, and he'll appear in a puff of smoke and a smell of sulphur (and a faint tinge of singed dog hair). Once summoned, he's only too glad to snarl, bark a misbehaving soul into obedience.

 

Mostly, I based Cerberus on muscle-dogs, which all seem to be very front-heavy. He's based mostly on a bulldog and a doberman and I tried to keep his as graphical as possible. The horns are useful for telling the different heads apart; they act in slightly different ways, the middle head being something of a ring-leader while the other two seem more like hench-men. If the middle head could talk and told a bad joke, the other two would definitely find it completely hilarious.

Character Designs -Ghosts

The ghosts were a bit tricky. They had to be roughly human, and also children, but there would be a kinda unwanted creepy/bleak factor which would be there if I went for something too realistic. After all, this is a story where some of the main characters are essentially dead children being ferried to hell. That's pretty dark when you put it like that. I wanted them to be something which registered as children without becoming uncanny or spooky. Primarily I wanted them to be charming and easy to sympathise with, hence the heavy stylisation and the big naive-looking eyes.

 

Where Charon is tall and skinny, these guys are squishy. They look like they're made of marshmallow. I liked the idea that all three ghosts essentially had the same design, since that way it initially seems like they have no real unique identity - which, obviously, they do have, and comes through very much in the animation.

The girl is the oldest of the ghosts, about 6, or she was in life. She's initially scared of Charon, but on the whole she's carefree and adventurous.

The twins are a bit younger and more timid - they have most of the same mannerisms and react to things together. They're scared of most things on the Styx, especially Charon. 

Inspirations:

Logo Design for CDIH

Hard at work on modelling over here, so hopefully we'll be posting that soon, but for now - we have logos! This is pretty much my first stab at logo design ever, so it was a lot of trial and error, but I like the result. I'll probably be doing it up in 3D sometime too.

 I also made a logo for the team! We're likely to make shorts together in the future if all goes well with Cold Day, so I thought it would be nice to establish a studio name so people remember us.

Cold Day On Facebook

We're now on Facebook!

Cold Day In Hell Facebook Page

Please do give us a like, we would really appreciate it. :)

Character Design - Charon

Charon was the first design I got down for this, the ferrymen who takes souls across the Styx into the world of the dead. He's a character from Greek mythology, though he's usually represented as an old man or else the classic Grim Reaper style design - though for some reason I've always imagined him with the bird head, something more along the lines of Thoth from Egyptian mythology.

Charon is more or less the antagonist of CDIH, but I wanted him slightly comic all the same - he's a bully, but at the same time a bit pathetic, hence the totally useless wings which are also quite expressive. He takes his job very seriously, enjoys routine and gets very upset if something unexpected happens. After all, the same job day in day out for an eternity, you sort of get used to things being just so...

 

 

Basically, he's just a big ol' line of action - he acts with his whole body.

Influences:

Storyboarding!

The storyboards and animatic for this is all done, but I'd rather not spoil the story, so instead I'm just posting up a few panels which will give you guys an idea of what we're working on here.

I think they pretty much speak for themselves. Next up, character designs! :)

Cold Day In Hell - Introduction!

Right, time to get this blog up, I think!

Cold Day in Hell is an animated short project being made by a bunch of animators/artists/general creative types in the UK. Most of us are a bit tired of doing work purely for showreels so we wanted to do something a bit more fun. Cold Day in Hell is a story about fun, a story which is at the same time sweet and just a little sad. It'll be about three minutes long and it'll be CG animated by folk who genuinely love animation.

So please! Do follow the blog, we'll be updating with little production logs along the way. Since we're all honest working folk, development on this won't exactly be lightning speed, but we're aiming to get it done around Christmas 2013.

Story sketches and character designs will be up pretty soon.