Breakdown. Breakthrough! Part II

In summary: I was ready to animate Honey; I discovered that my original design for her face wasn't holding up to further manipulation and didn't look sufficiently "cartoony" for my taste; I discovered I can't caricature for crap; I bought a great book about caricature.

I collected some samples of styles I like then I got to work drawing.

And drawing.

And drawing.

All of that constant drawing of ONLY Honey's face became tiresome but I kept drawing, adjusting her eyes, nose, mouth and head shape until I created a combination that worked for my eye.

It took about THREE months but I finally got her to a point with which I'm satisfied.

The October, 2013 drawings:

The November, 2013 drawings:

The December, 2013 drawings:

And the final designs:

To reference Lino DiSalvo's comment about the difficulties of animating emotions for female characters, I think it's interesting that I didn't struggle nearly as much when designing Luthor. I think it's because that, as a male, I wasn't as concerned with his attractiveness. It looks like this idea that women ALWAYS have to be attractive regardless of what they're experiencing is more deeply ingrained in my American brain than I like to admit. Note to self: GET OVER IT!

Ultimately, I'm glad with the decision to put film production on hold until I designed a Honey I could be satisfied with. I purposely use the word "satisfied" and not "happy" because it became clear during the design process that regardless of how hard I tried, my skills, at this present moment, were simply too limited to allow me to design the Honey that made me happy. Settling for "satisfied" for the sake of re-starting production was a practical decision with which I can live.

Onward!