Character Designs

When I first heard that the theme was "This really happened" my mind went straight to the scene from The Invention of Lying (Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson, 2009) where they made a joke about their movies all having to be documentaries based on real events because they were incapable of making anything up or lying. 

This is what got me thinking that maybe basing my animation on something real might not be as fun so I thought maybe it would be fun if "This really happened" was actually a catchphrase and from there I came up with ideas of who might use a catchphrase. 

I eventually settled on a superhero/supervillain based story and because I like to make things funny, I thought that maybe the superhero's power could be that he insults the villain until he annoys him enough to stop him. Then, because I thought that maybe it should be child-friendly, I decided to use really tame insults that aren't actually too insulting (basically backhanded compliments e.g. "your clothes are really nice but you'd look better if you combed your hair differently OOOHH! This really happened! Whatcha gonna do?"

http://superherotar.framiq.com

I took to the internet to try to find help on designing my superhero when I stumbled across this site.

I started off with trying to design the protagonist but I actually ended up designing the villain (shown in the next image.

Villain (top), villain's dog (middle), first hero design (bottom)

I drew what I had designed on the website and was happy with it but as you'll see in the next image, I tried tweaking it slightly just to see if I could make it better. I then started thinking about mysterious supervillain tropes and thought about Claw from Inspector gadget and the cat that usually sits on his lap and is a common trope for supervillains. However, I thought that for comedic effect, it would be good to make the pet look like it's constantly on edge and nervous which led me to using a chihuahua instead of a cat because they always look panicked to me.

Alternative antagonist design

This is where I tried to tweak my original design of the villain but I decided that I much preferred the other version so I decided to mostly ignore the new design.

2nd Protagonist design

The whole idea behind the hero was to just make him an everyman and perhaps even a tad pathetic and unassuming as a superhero. This was based on the character Mumen Rider from One Punch Man. I thought that since his superpower is pretty stupid and useless, his appearance should reflect this so I tried a few designs of this.

Another protagonist design

I also tried to experiment because I thought that if I just focused on one type of design, I might just get tunnel vision and there could always be a much better idea for a character that I just wasn't seeing.

Another character design

I also tried to make a character that reflects how stupid his powers are.

Alternative pet design

I went back to look at the chihuahua and looked at other famous villains in animation and one that came to mind was Hades' cerberus in Hercules so I tried to design my own cerberus only to realise that I either shouldn't use it or that I should have it as well as the chihuahua but used as more a defence than a real pet.

Another character design

Another character design

Another character design

Another character design

Another character design

I also tried to design more traditional superhero appearances to see whether they would fit the role or not.

Another hero design

 This one was based more on Captain Qwark from Ratchet & Clank

Final Protagonist design

This was the design that I settled on for the protagonist and even came up with a short backstory for him. A normal traffic warden who dreams of becoming a superhero until a radioactive microphone drops from his hands and he becomes... The Warden: a superhero capable of insulting anyone into submission.