In Bohlool’s School — a cut-out animation series — I served as the character designer during pre-production, developing the unique cast including Bohlool and his signature visual gags.
First
In the initial phase, I developed preliminary design concepts to align with the director’s and client’s expectations and assess stylistic compatibility.
Next
In this phase, I focused on refining the characters’ silhouette readability while implementing the director’s notes. Each design had to:
- Visually communicate personality traits from the character bios,
- Achieve a strong golden pose for keyframes, and
- Maintain clear silhouettes for immediate character recognition.
This phase focused on character traits and prop development. For example, the character Bohlool:
- Carries a staff that he sometimes pretends to ride like a horse as part of his eccentric behavior
- Features a turban that, when reversed and placed on the staff, takes the shape of a donkey’s face
final
After further discussions with the director and investors, we decided to implement additional modifications and introduce new characters to the project
At this point, we realized the client didn’t have a clear vision and was making unreasonable demands. My mandatory military service period arrived, and I had to leave the project. It wasn’t a bad experience, just strange… When I returned, I saw the designs had changed yet again! I asked myself why we were working with such a client at all. Nevertheless, I enjoyed in my work. In the end, I designed several supporting characters to match the new designs and created facial expressions for all characters.
During production, we sometimes encountered rig limitations that couldn’t properly achieve certain character poses without distorting the designs. In these cases, I would create custom pose illustrations based on the storyboard and provide them to the animators for reference.
Feel free to share any questions or thoughts – I’m happy to discuss further.