Character designs from Monsters vs. Aliens

7 thoughts on “Character designs from Monsters vs. Aliens”

1. It’s always interesting to see how many permutations these things go through before the characters are finalized. There is a great book about Monty Python that details all the other names they thought of using for the show.

2. In the commentary for “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” they discuss the several designs considered for the little handheld raygun that Giovani Ribisi uses to shoot the giant robots. It’s onscreen for a moment but they agonized over it for weeks.

3. Takes a lot of tweaking until the right character appeal comes along. Look at ANY old movie art production samples and it’s that way (obviously).

4. You see the same transition in comics. There are a million examples of refined characters that look nothing like their first issue counterpart.

5. Awesome! I think as cartoonists, part of us want to see the transformation of blank paper to finished product, just as much as the final design. I know I certainly do!

6. Endless permutations seems a typical process in the film/video world, but it would be interesting to see how long the readers of these TDC forums spend on revamping character design or props, etc for their own strips/panels.

   I guess some concepts were originally started long time ago from doodles, gradually evolving over time until one day someone finally sits up and says ‘I think I’ll turn this into a comic strip!” so it’s a done deal.

   But what about those that one day say,” I am going to create a new strip…” and begin to work up the concept, the characters, the back story, etc.

   Surely that’s when the urge to keep improving prior to launch could be agonizing/paralyzing?

7. Speaking of permutations: http://www.edisonlee.net/labnotes/

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