While working at Reel FX Creative Studios, I did storyboards, character design & prop design for BOZ, The Green Bear Next Door for Exclaim! Entertainment, who specializes in the creation, production, and distribution of character-based children's properties. My prop designs were used in all the Boz DVDs; Thank You God For Colors And Shapes, Adventures in Imagination, Thank You God for B-O-Zs and 1-2-3s, A WowieBOZowee Christmas, Thank You God For Bananas Bubbles And Busy Bodies, and Thank You God For Friends And Helpers.
I'll talk about my storyboarding & character design experience in another post. My prop designs for Boz were the first time I had been given a direct lesson in how to cater the designs to a preschool-level aesthetic. Reel FX's spectacular production designer Robert St. Pierre was creating the most beautiful previsualization for the 3D modelers to work from. While he was doing this, he needed someone to do some prop designs, so I was assigned.
What I learned about doing prop design for children's animation, is that not everything has to be perfectly symmetrical, or realistic-looking. In fact, it's desirable if you take a recognizable shape, and kind of 'goof' it up a bit & play with the standard design so as to give the object a bit more of a 'cartoony' character that would fit into the 3D-cartoony world of Boz quite well.
Softer edges on things to make them look less harsh, sometimes simplifying what would otherwise be something with a bit more sophistication... it was a matter of making sure there weren't any harsh contrasts that would stand out like a sore thumb.
Conversely, if the overall style were to have been sharply-cornered like Dexter's Laboratory, then any props would need to be attuned to that standard. It's just a matter of making sure things are consistent looking throughout the design of the whole show, whatever show you happen to be working on at the time.
Robert St. Pierre is a very good teacher. He has such a brilliant mind, and you can see it in his work. After I completed this assignment, I knew I was so much better in my work than I was before.
