Ideas - characters

I think that there are two main ways evolving through which I am approaching this brief. I think I have remained conscious in the creation of these characters that they are going to be a part of a gif, and Im unsure if this has really helped or hindered me. Looking at my work I think that some of my storyboards have maybe been too ambitious, and Ive focused more on the action/movement of a character as apposed to the actual personality or feeling they are going to convey. 

A character that I am most interested in so far is this cactus guy, whose needles are his hair, moustache and beard. I see him as this grumpy old man character, and I think he has a lot of personality. Testing him in different media helped me to refine what he could look like in the final gif - my preferred media being cut paper just because it clarifies the simple features and expressions. So far I have done a storyboard of him sneezing which I think is quite comical and endearing. I think however as a character I could take him a lot further and need to do some more storyboarding of things that he could do or have happen to him. 

All of these characters look at movement - like dancing or swimming, which I do like and I think is a really nice thing to have in a gif because it presents the opportunity for something quite playful and comical, as well as a nice loop. In terms of the characters I have made here though, I really don't think that they're that interesting and none of them really enthral me. I think that they lack personality or feeling. The storyboards here are also quite ambitious, and due to my lack of animating skill I'd rather do something simple well at this point. 

This is another character that I am quite interested in taking further. I like the idea of having a bear really conked out sleeping and his chest just moving up and down. I have began to experiment with using some ink textures, using them similarly as in visual narratives. I really like this aesthetic and think that it could work really well especially for this character. Although the mixture of the log texture and the bear maybe is a bit too overwhelming together…I need to experiment with this more. 

I like this little egg character, as he seems quite sweet and happy. In term of media I prefer him in gouache as I think that the bold black lines work really well with the white and yellow. I am unsure of how I would animate him, as I do like the storyboards I have done so far, again I just need to consider this more...

Drawing this fox character is something that I actually quite struggled with - I found it hard to get the right proportions especially with the legs. I like the loose and messy aesthetic of this ink though, and I think that the two different drawings of it standing and curling into a ball could produce an interesting and quite sweet animation of moving in between the two.