Sapiens Character Designs - Francis

Early inspiration for Francis came from Bill Nigh and Roger from 101 Dalmations.

Shortly after completing this we realized that our story and our characters were too complicated and we scrapped it all and started fresh!

Every time we did a re-write Francis' role and personality would change--sometimes he was well-meaning but doddery, sometimes he was stern and angry.

Another snag in the character design process was an ongoing debate between big/small and thick/thin as the visual dynamic between the main characters. I was known as the team's 'Tall Francis Advocate' but I tried my hand at some little 'Franci'.

I pressed the design team to come up with one word to describe Francis and the word we came up with was 'frustrated' so I created two character designs based around that word, this was one.

This was my second 'frustrated' Francis design. I affectionately dubbed him 'forehead Francis'. Previously 'Tall Francis' had ben an underdog, but the creative team really liked Forehead Francis and he became the base for our final design!

Francis Final Form.

Francis does a lot of gritting teeth and growing so it was important for the artists to understand the anatomy of that angry face.