Stop motion character designs

Aim: Design a character that can be made into a head, using clay. There should be three heads in all, that can be used for replacement animation.

I got myself a magazine for hair styles to generate interesting ideas for a character. I find that this is a good way to start as some of the hair designs can be quite outrageous in everyday life, but different and interesting when it comes to creating characters.

This design was one of them. I thought the clown crossed with the geisha made a very visually interesting character.

As I wanted to create a male character design, I adapted the drawing, to give him a larger, square jaw. I like the design of the hair and gave him a mask also. As its a male character, but with a geisha design, I felt kabuki actors would be good to study as this traditional type of japanese theatre only uses male actors, so sometimes the actors will dress as geisha or other female characters.

I do like the hair design. However, to create multiple heads I think the design would have to be simple so that it can remain consistent, which will be very important when it comes to using replacement as a principle of the animation. 

Remembering what Curtis Jobling said (creator of Frankensteins Cat and other animated shows) about using simple shapes to create characters, I tried to creak the character down in this way. This should help me to understand how to put the character together, when it comes to sculpting it.

I experimented with the design, creating a robot like character with the shapes. However I wanted a more natural character as I felt this would be better in creating a more expressive, emotional character.