I’m interested in doing some keyframe animation for this project, so I need a character that will work well with that technique. I love old school cartoons like The Roadrunner, with their humorous squash and stretch anims. With this in mind I added things like dangling arms, and an antenna that sways with secondary motion. I did some sketches to work it all out, and came up with this little guy!

There are a lot of slick designs out there. I’m actually getting tired of seeing badass robots, so I went for cute and expressive. His silhouette is simple and readable. His face is a screen which can display his emotional state. I could use this to indicate game state changes as well, though i assume it won’t be visible all the time.

Some decisions need to be made regarding his anthropomorphic characteristics. I’d like him to act human, while still having robot tendencies (whatever those might be). I find it interesting that we are so devoted to recreating ourselves as a species… Automatons, Androids, Life Model Decoys.