I've been working on character designs today. This is a difficult process for me and I only feel that I can achieve a viable solution by hammering out many different versions until one makes sense. I've put aside the storyboarding phase for now, because I know I will need the four principle characters in the play, regardless of the shot order. I also think it's important to put ample time into the designs, because I will be working with them all year. A big part of this process has been in developing the mechanics of the puppets and how they will move. I constructed a hand with rotating joints in Maya to go through the motions of handling flat cut-outs in the 3-D software package. The more joints I built, the more shortcuts I came across, including an action script in photoshop to simplify the image "middle-man" as I like to think of it. It is still very tedious compared to working primarily in After Effects, but the animation rewards will outweigh the painful task of character set up.
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