Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Hornbill Willie

My story calls for a bird to go after the Chameleon. Looking up the natural enemies of Chameleons, I discover that one of its more exotic and beautiful hunters is the Hornbill. So I decide to go with that and start drawing Hornbills.
But as I'm drawing these birds I keep thinking I've seen this bird somewhere before. Then it hits me...

It turns out that Zazu from the Lion King is a Yellow Billed Hornbill! (And he's designed a lot better than mine too >:-(  I like how they designed the tail. I might have to "borrow" that!).
So you know what that means. I have to design a Hornbill that doesn't look anything like Zazu. Taking the drawings I did of the real birds (top), I'm looking for shapes I can exploit.
Boomerang shapes are always cool. The design on the bottom right (above) looks good. Lets see if I can come up with a body shape for it:
It looks like I'm getting somewhere with this. Playing with shapes and proportions here. I'm favoring the upright position of this bird as opposed to the "squat" position of Zazu. That will help distinguish my bird from Zazu. I'm going to go play with this some more. Davelyman out!

1 comment:

  1. Agreed I like the boomerang bill shape it's a nice balance to his round head and eyes. I'm Nat by the way and I just wanted to thank u for following our final year animation film Draco (I'm director and animator) I'm so stoked that u joined the blog and hope u will enjoy our progress into production...any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've joined ur blog and am loving ur work. Thanks heaps, u have made this aspiring animator's year :)

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