Start of character designing, the developing stage

The start of my character design, I am going to based my three characters, one young, one middle of his life and one old as influnce to 2007 Formula 1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.

I reckon this would work well due to Kimi's characteristics such as choc-ice incidence in Malaysia 2009, some people say he could be the love child of James Hunt and saying things shouldn't be saying in interviews and so forth.



I Started off to look at Formula 1 based animation and comic books, and the first thing I have find was Sennninha. Senninha is a Brazilian comic book character based upon the Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna. Senninha was launched in 1994 and was cancelled in the same year before returning in 2008.

Senninha (little Senna) was created by Rogério and Ridaut, and the reason this was created due to Rogério and Ridaut passion of Formula 1 and Ayrton Senna. So they decided to create a comic, which would be a copy of Senna, a little Senna and Senninha was born.

Senninha is the main character of the series, with characteristics very similar to Ayrton Senna, with unruly hair and red overalls (like the McLaren overalls Senna raced in that period). Also, Senninha was eight years old in the comics.

Both Rogério and Ridaut didn't have the money to publish it, so they decided to go to Ayrton Senna. When they met, Senna loved the idea and he always wanted to do something for the children, he wanted to be educational as-well to help his charity work in Brazil. This was the best way with the Senninha character.







I started with the young character first, I wanted the character to be possibly be around the five or six years old mark. But, the first attemted I made him too old, I really wanted to make him cute.

Then I researched more on character designs with cuteness in them and I looked at Powerpuff Girls and Dexters Laboratory as influences.





Also, then I look at Preston Blair's Advanced Animation for ideas.

Then I looked at a character designers web-site to get some influences such as look at some Bugs Bunny design sheet below.

Then I restarted designing the young character once again and this time I felt this design worked better more cuter and more younger.

So therefore, I continue developing the young version of Kimi, which I called now on "Iceman" (nickname Kimi Raikkonen is usually called by the fans).

Then I started some early development of the two older characters.

Overall, a good start to my character designs. Also I felt that the lessons with Vincent Woodcock from last time out really helped me out for this project. More to come from this project.

Bye.