characters and backgrounds...

I have now come up with the final sketches for my animation and here are the characters. I sketched the skeleton up and I then cut it up and the joints, I then put string inbetween them so that the skeleton could move.

 Heres a photo of one of the characters I think I'm going to use and I think he's going to be the guy that seranades the women with his banjo.

 This next one is a possible character I'd like to use. My story has a sort of guy and then a handsome guy comes along so I need to think about what i want them to look like and how I can show one as being really handsome, so this is what I need to do next in my sketchbook.

I've been thinking about what kind of background I could have and whether I want to use a background. So here I have researched mexican patterns, rug patterns, cloth patterns e.t.c. I've found that mexican patterns are all really quite colourfull and stripey and if I want my skeletons to stand out a striking background might not work well with it, but it could also work. I could have the skeletons as sillouettes?!.

So this next drawing I've done in my sketchbook is of a mexican pattern and I've put the simple skeleton infront of it and you can see that it does stand out and works well.  After this I'm going to put the skeleton sketches I did earlier infront of a pattern but a less complex pattern and see how it goes.

I really like the bright colours and patterns in this piece and the mexican day of the dead art is full of bright colours and great patterns so you can see how inspiring the art is to my animation. Below is my next sketch of the next pattern I chose from my research and because there's a  strip of white on the bottom and top you can see the skeleton alot more than you would with the last skeleton. I also have the idea that as the animation starts the pattern goes round in a circle so the skeleton is moving one way and the pattern is continously moving the other way, I think this could enhance the movement a little.

Theres another option I could go for and that is a totally different style of background. I could do a traditional mexican scene like in the westerns when theres a stand off in the village. Heres a few sketches of this idea and I think they work quite well.

 I really like both of these and if i want to use them I'd find it hard to choose. I like the detail of the church and it gives a real mexican feel and I also like colours and the way its painted. And i like the dessert scenery because it's a very traditional cartoon style background for this type of animation. I now need to make some desicions as to what I want the whole animation to be like. I like all the ideas I have come up with but making a desicion quickly is often quite vital to my design progress and the animation may take time to do so I need to make sure I leave enough time to do it.