Character design: Cow

This is the character design for the protagonist of my animated short Cowterspace.

The primary goal in my character design was to create a protagonist that resembles a cow but does not have the typical form of the animal one would expect.

The viewer should instantly recognize the character as cow, assisted by basic attributes (ears, horns, udder, skin/fur pattern) while the body shape and movement of the character resembles a smaller and more agile creature. I also tried to achieve a design, that efficiently displays basic emotions by just using the eye(lid)s, eyebrows, ears and mouth to avoid having to animate very complex facial expressions. The cow should of course be able to make the viewer believe it is physically capable of its actions. Lastly the cow had to be cute and make it easy for the viewer to sympathize and put himself in its place.

 

This is the final design with textures and first animations:

 

Rendered image of the final design:

Cowterspace_Protagonist.texturiert

 

Earlier version of the design without textures. I rendered this one with outline to achieve a comic-like look, but decided to go for another look for the final result.

 

These are my first scribbles. I tried to stick to basic shapes for the face. The final form of the body primally developed in the process of modelling.

protagonist_scribbles