Jinn Jinn

It's the Corona virus self quarantine here, and I’ve decided to spend my time working on another ‘homegrown’ cartoon from my home studio.  I'm expanding on something I wrote about earlier in a posting called Seeing Things that goes over the same discovery process talked about here.

The origin for this film is unique in that it wasn’t inspired by a book or my attempt to create an original character, it came from a tablecloth! There is a phenomenon called Pareidolia where the brain tries to make sense of chaotic information presented to it.  This is how we see pictures in clouds and faces in patterns.  My wife has a tablecloth we use often and in the pattern I saw this extraterrestrial flying in his aircraft, and in another section of the cloth was his alien friend or pet. 

I’ve named the ET Jinn Jinn because he might have been confused as a genie because he rides in a Vimana: a Hindu flying chariot.  His friend Sadiqi, (which means friend), is also an inter-dimensional spirit buffalo, or something.

Originally I had envisioned Jinn as a time traveler flying around looking for fun in different historical events and accidentally altering history.  He's the one who put the crack in the Liberty Bell and tipped over the Tower Of Pisa.  Anyway, I settled on an origin story of how Jinn meets his pal Sadiqi, it gives me an opportunity to figure out who these guys are and what they look like moving.

Like The Yellow Submarine, this film is becoming a mixture of cultural styles, and turning psychedelic pretty fast.  I know this is not going to be liked by everyone or maybe anyone, but with the quarantine going on; it’s a nice way to spend some time.

Here are three tests strung together with a scratch audio track added, (it might not play too smoothly).
Jinn Jinn doesn't have pupils yet in these tests which makes him look more evil than he is...

STAY HEALTHY!  

Design test with Stand-in Jinn Jinn and Sadiqi

Title Card Idea_01

Title Card Idea_02

Trying to find expressions with this design

More expression exploration

More exploration with a 3/4 head turn and a happy Jinn Jinn

A hungry Sadiqi design

Sadiqi expression test

The original tablecloth that inspired Jinn Jinn

Jinn Jinn against the tablecloth Vimana

Rough version of the Vimana & Jinn Jinn over the original tablecloth

A harder to see Sadiqi, which I modified quite a bit, from the tablecloth.