Making The Visit - Character Design

Here's Oksana with her new coloring. I like this better. There's absolutely no reason why she should have pink or white skin. Skin color in the animation world is a very interesting subject.

There's always a peculiar little moment when you draw a character for animation and wonder what color to paint his/her/its skin. Sometimes it's really easy. Like when you are drawing a skunk or a turtle, let's say. You can just use black, white and maybe green. But a human character? Hmmm... let's see... what color will she be? All sorts of logical reasons why a character should be one color or another will pop into your head. Most professional animators... actually nearly every single one... will choose pink or a very light tan color. They will rationalize that this makes the most sense because of the storyline or setting of the animation. They will then proceed to show you how logically that character will bounce off a wall, squash into the size of a peanut and survive an explosion with nothing more than mildly singed hair.

If you really want to get into this subject, examine how much hero worship there is in today's animation world for Disney's lovable 'nine old men' of animation. Then consider that in the history of filmed entertainment you will not find more color-biased work than the work of these nine sweet old fellows. History and the way things were in their time is no excuse.

So our main character will be brown because I think she looks better this way.

Next, is a more finished drawing of Oksana's father. He still has the lumbering, slightly dull-witted quality that I put in his original sketch.