Kambei Shimada
So I decided to take on this project of redesigning Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai for animation with critters instead of people. I'm currently trying my best to get into a job doing visual development for games or animation so I thought it would be good practice to try it out on a story I really enjoyed and give it my own take. I'll be doing characters, props and environments for this so it should be pretty interesting and I think I'll have a lot of fun!
I wanted to try my best to find which critter would best suit the personality and overall shape of each samurai. Fortunately, the characters in the movie are all very distinct and did a great job of lending their personality to the viewer despite there being very little dialogue about backstories. Here are the warm up sketches I did to get into the right place for the characters.
final sketch of Kambei
I felt really good about this frog for the face shape and for how, although Kambei is the oldest of the samurai, he is very wise and quick. I think it was the right pick.
Concept for Kambei Shimada
Stay tuned for the rest of the seven samurai. I hope you enjoyed, thanks for looking!