Cabbage Pot Pre-Production Diary | "Pottle"

Originally Cabbage was to be the sole character of the story, but as I went along scribbling down ideas and drawing designs for the steam-powered carriage it became clear to me that the story, if it were going to get anywhere, it would need something else - another character to propel it. That character was Pottle, and fittingly the name of the story "Cabbage Pot" had found it's Pot part. Instantly a dynamic was created; two friends going on an adventure, also giving something for Cabbage to bounce off of and grow as a character too. Cabbage is the fat friend popularized in many films, television shows, games and books: Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings, another 'Sam' in the form of Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones, but the biggest source of inspiration for Pottle I think is the character of 'Chowder' from Gil Kenan's 2006 3D animated film Monster House:

Mitchel Musso as 'DJ' and Sam Lerner as 'Chowder' in Monster House (2006)[1]

In fact, that film probably has given me much inspiration in terms of the tone the story will take and comradery of the friends, the fact that they're willing to help eachother out in dire situations; sometimes they don't get along, they fight and they're stubborn. There's also the supernatural element in that film that makes it effective. What I think separates Monster House from most other children's films is that it has a darker tone than most can get away with. It doesn't obfuscate that horror behind a wall of childish antics, it embraces the horror and there you come away with something genuine which enlivens and makes the characters more believable too.

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Unlike the design process for Cabbage which took a while for him to come to fruition in terms of his appearance, that challenge was lessened with Pottle. I knew what he needed to look like and committed to that vision from the get-go. In one sketch I had found him, a large chubby, cantankerous and expressive kid. Over the next few days of designing him and becoming more acquainted with his character and who he was going to be, I found him to be the more interesting of the two characters.
Here in the first sketch I gave him a cloak and a knitted beanie, which wasn't an item of fashion in our counterpart Victorian era history, yet I wanted to give them items of clothing which would better suit them to the world I was creating. These are characters who are relatively poor, who come from backgrounds where clothing is patched-up and never discarded - mixing the old with the new which is hinted at in other design elements of the world.

A theme I wanted to give Pottle was something to do with nature, leaves, trees and all things green, but my next drawing would dress him in the mucky earth tones and orange! I think orange would play nicely alongside Cabbage's purples and it gave him a more boisterous attitude to wear a quite radical colour to other Gromples who prefer a more sophisticated, yet plain attire of a suit.
Like Cabbage I gave Pottle a motif, some pattern that would be somewhere on him which just so happened to be his beanie. Vaguely inspired by Celtic knots but simple and with less going on.

I gave him a button-up cardigan that he'd outgrown or stretched with the addition of his weight gain over the years and it isn't particularly colourful - it's murky and stained and once had a few more buttons which have popped off. He also has a messenger bag which has been patched-up with handkerchiefs and swatches of old clothes, if the green and leaves didn't make it into his costume, it became a part of his bag, with the leaves around the flap.

After this drawing my vision of Pottle was solidified, he turned out quite well according to my mind. Another thing I wanted to do with his character was design someone whose silhouette was distinct from Cabbage's - another callback to Monster House's 'DJ' and 'Chowder'.

Sometime in the middle of designing Pottle, I designed his buttons which I was hoping to somehow work into the story as a catalyst for later events. First I sculpted two buttons from fimo oven-bake clay which were red and had glitter throughout it making it look slightly magical. After that I devoted a page to sketching a few designs with a crack which had been inflicted during a fight with Cabbage (which is yet to be elaborated on).

After they were baked I applied a few splashes of sepia/black ink diluted with water to bring out a few of the details and give it an old and worn look and a bit of gold sharpie for the star on one of them.

I ran out of clay, or enough to make as many as I had hoped but there was a small piece remaining and that sculpt went onto become the final button design which was based on one or two of the sketches above. It was the perfect size and look, even if I didn't think at first it was going to look like anything.

I only had a week cut out of my schedule to roughly animate everything, but I still had time to animate the button falling and cracking in Adobe Animate.

The same process applied to Cabbage in the Animatification stage: breaking down the character design into lines and using contrast to add form. Pottle's face has more protruding features than Cabbage therefore his expressions were quite different to work with.

Animating Pottle was fun, as I had mentioned before, his features made it a different challenge to move all at once. Here's a simple rotation of Pottle's head:

So with Pottle mostly done the next post will be a brief one looking at the carriage designs, then onto the rough animatics which I produced in Adobe Animate for my art installation. Then onto the Witch and many other things!

References:
1. Monster House image sourced from Google Images.