Getting (some of) the Band Back Together
The final episode of Felini At Sea required I make updated/aged characters from Lightspeed Drifting. At first I was not looking forward to it, but once I got started, all hell broke loose. I went a bit overboard on facial articulation, with separate controls not just for the eyes, but also for eyebrows — individually. This episode is packed with emotion, and the extra controls allowed me to make them much more expressive.
For the curious, here are before-and-after images of the three Lightspeed characters that appear in "Hello." You'll notice a vast difference between styles, progressing from a traditional cartoon look to my new, quasi-3D effect.
During the "cartoon years," Dicker remained quite consistent. When I pushed him 16 years into the future, I trimmed him down considerably; he did, after all, suffer quite badly being tortured by the Clobbernauts. I also moved his hair "south" to reinforce his reaching his "golden years."
Token saw quite a few changes over the years as a 'toon. Originally quite conservative, she let her hair down after marrying Dicker. When she became a captain, she put her hair back up in a trio of buns. She kept trim in her retirement, cutting a fine figure in her new spandex uniform. I also took the opportunity to improve her proportions, reducing her cartoon head and giving her body a more natural shape. Of the three, she saw the greatest change. Incidentally, as a 'toon she had grey eyes, even though I drew them as green; they turned grey due to a compositing issue. I've since fixed that problem, so her eyes can now correctly be green.
Izzy was just a "kid" when he joined the fleet, and still dyed his hair purple. When he became an officer, he switched to a buzz cut. His age is reflected in a fuller face, and he no longer uses red/orange contacts, revealing his true brown eyes. I as going to reproportion his head, as I'd done with the others, but it looked odd, so I left it oversize. Izzy will one day be a captain.