character design

I'm a tiny bit behind with my schedule, but I have been toying with the character design in my head for the last week or so, constantly changing my opinion, and have decided to change him slightly so that he's not such an old man.
Now I want to animate him as a middle-aged, short, fat guy! This will be more challenging and I won't feel as bad for him getting beaten up :D

I have also found a useful walk cycle on youtube of someone with his figure which I can adapt for my animation;



Anyway, I quickly drew him onto photoshop and started playing around with the colours..





it is important that I keep his design simple because this time I want to add shading to his animation, something I didn't have time for last time.
I think I am going to go with the design of the first picture, because it reflects the outfits of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, and because it just looks better :P

My next step is to work out the storyboard completely and to start drawing the key poses, I want to get into this as soon as I can.

I have also finished working out the storyboard. Here is a VERY basic animatic of what I want to do, took about 10mins, sorry for rubbish quality;


Before I finish this project, I need to try and get a better quality version of the clip, with sound. But since this was ripped directly from the DVD and not from the internet I'm not sure if there is anything I can do. Will have to enquire about it at college over the next few days.