A Gentleman's Duel.

I just finished watching Blur Studio's most excellent recent short film, A Gentleman's Duel as part of the Siggraph 2007 Electronic Theater. This entry was easily my favorite out of all of the shorts I saw. It had a great story, the animation was well-acted, pretty good lighting, and to top it all off, the main characters dueled each other aboard cool steampunk mecha!

What I really noticed the most was the character design in this film. It may very well not be easy to design human characters for an animated film, but a lot of major studios seem to go out of their way to make their CG humans look creepy.

I mean, compare these ugly characters from another film franchise. They all look like transgendered clones of John Lithgow. These characters are utterly bland:



Now look at the characters from A Gentleman's Duel. With these characters, you only need a quick glance to divine their individual personalities:



The character designers used a more cartoon-style plastic-like solid surface with painted streaks to represent hair. These guys decided not to have them fitted with CG hair, which I think worked out for the best. CG hair is a pain in the ass to achieve the right look, and if you don't get it just right, it will look odd and swishy, ultimately distracting the viewer from the story.

Great job guys!