For the circus animal design that I did I fully decide on doing a black swan for it. The influences for it was a poster and the exoticness of the black being mainly from Australia and not many live within England, plus they’re notorious for not being tame, so I thought they fit in well in a circus. here is the reference I used:

First I designed a full adult swan and baby swan with an added display of the wing. This was so I could decide whether I wanted to do a baby or adult swan. I even added a circus-like hat and bowtie to see what is more fitting. The design of the two swans were both realistic to the animal I was depicting at this stage. This was just to get a better representation of animal I was choosing and didn’t have to commit to a design at this point. it also helped me get a grasp on the basic design and structure of the swans as it wasn’t an animal that I was overly familiar in drawing. When I got to designing the creature I measured the form of the creature by comparing the body parts like how the height of an adult swans neck is roughly the same as the length of the body. I then constructed the swan by using the line of action and then breaking down the body parts into basic shapes and conforming them into outlines of the baby and adult swan. Then I proceeded to add details to the 2 swans and I was done. I chose to do the baby swan after finish designing it all as I thought the baby was more appealing and better for the circus. Overall I was very pleased with the design fo the swans as I thought they looked very accurate to there real counterparts and drawn to exactly how I wanted them to be.

After choosing the baby swan I then proceeded to redesign the swan in that more simplistic/cartoony form more fitting for animation. This is partly as it’ll making it easier to animate, but also to fit the pretty simple character design I did for it as well. When I did the simple character design I proceeded to use the same basic shapes, but rather than elaborating on them I proceeded to stick to more primitive shapes and reduced the amount fo details, so it still had the overall features of a baby swan, but easier to visualise and animate. I think this design was better overall as well, as making the animal less realistic allowed me to create a more expressing looking animal by exaggerating the animal’s facial feature looks and size. I think that the design of the cartoony baby swan was very fitting and expressive. the design looks nice and pleasing and it was easy to read the duck emotion and personality. it was a nice simplistic form that you could easily imagine how to animate it. If there was going to be anything that I could add or change, it would maybe some thumbnail sketches of the cartoony swan being more expressive and displaying different emotions.

proceeding to the next step, I started to do a turn-around of the animal and coloured in the side angle of the animal. for the turn-around angles, I proceeded to do 4 different angles of the swan similar to the character sketch. I measured out the swan and used guidelines to make sure I got the angles and proportions correct. I do think that I that all the pose were perfectly fine and showed accurate the positioning of the pose except for the 3/4 turn pose. The turn pose looks correct but slightly smaller than the other pose. I think that I could have edited it to be better. the colouring I think was fine overall. The colours didn’t clash and the textures and colour help depict the sort of ruffled baby swan look I was going for as well as the colours help create focus around the face which helps make more express seem obvious. I do think that I could have lightened up around the eye or add some eye colour to make the eye stand out more.

I think that overall the design of the swan went swimmingly and came out well. The swan has been well depicted and simplified well. The design something that I’m quite fond of and think is fitting for an animation of a circus. Something that I would change to improve the design overall would be simply to add more emphasis on the design, such as thumbnails and more poses.