I want to keep the characters very simple and colour coded... This advert is aimed at young children, so anything too complicated will be lost on them. Small children respond well to simple shapes and bright colours, so I started looking for characters that are made up of very basic shapes and seem simplistic, but still look interesting. I came across some concept art for the game Super Paper Mario where most of the characters are flat, 2D, and have been purposefully made to look like very basic shapes strung together. Personally I love the style, especially the vivid colour with the thick, bold black outlines. It really makes them stand out, and I think I'd like to use a similar technique.
The only problem with the above characters is that they're mostly very angular... Which is fine considering they're clearly not meant to be human, but since my characters are supposed to be, I decided to look at some more organic shapes. The obvious one that game to mind was a circle, but I felt that was too boring and probably wouldn't be very expressive. So instead I started looking for characters with oval, elongated heads, and I found some great examples. Hey Arnold takes it to the extreme, but I think that's why it looks so good. Its the exaggeration that makes it an interesting head shape to look at. But even so, I don't want to go too overboard... both of these characters have to stand next to each other on a small stage, and there needs to be a gap in between them. So I think I'll go with an oval head more like the boy from the Quavers advert. I love how his ears and hair stick out so much from his face, and he has a reall nice body shape as well. Skinny limbs seem to look good sticking out of a triangular body, so I might borrow that as well.
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