I designed my character, Val, to be sturdy, strong and durable, in order to give them a sense of indestructibility. In order to develop this aspect of their character further, I want to animate them in a way that clearly portrays these values and defines them as being something tangible and unique.
Below are some sketches I made to help decide what kinds of movements Val could make in my final animations.
Since Val is very sturdy and physically dense, yet lightweight and flexible, I want to give them movements that are recognisable but also amplified by stylization that wouldn’t be physically possible for regular humans to accomplish.
One route I could take for this character’s animation is to make them feel more robotic with their movement and mannerisms to correspond to the character’s personality and body type, where they seemingly have no human-like conscience, emotions or biology, which would help convey the character’s highly inhuman mind and their immense incomprehensible strength and abilities. A different approach would be to make their animations more energetic, airy and expressive, to correspond to their cartoony design/stylisation and their lightweight and flexible limbs and proportions, which would help convey the understanding that they are still an organic entity.