Character Designs for a possible animation

How did you develop your script, characters and environment?

Initially i looked at designing a character, before considering a script or environment. I looked on the Internet for inspiration for the type of character that i could create. I did random searches on Google and came across this image of a range of robots.
This inspired me to create a 'Robot' as a character. I played around with different shapes. I quite liked the idea of basing by design around a wheel. Robots are usually very mechanical, with quite rigid legs, however I knew of no robots on a wheel. I used drawing skills to develop my character and ideas.

After much experimentation and research into Robots I came up with the design below. I gave it a more 'human' feeling by giving it a mohikan and goatie! I also designed my character with nostrils and an emotion sensor. I decided to create quite a fleible character, with bendy arms to enable movement. The characters mouth was designed as a gap between the head and the body, therefore making it speechless. I decided that the head could float up and down, and turn on a pivot as a way of displaying limited emotion.I then developed this idea by creating more indepth designs. Due to the limits of speech I decided to find an alternative way for my character to display emotion. I looked at the main features of my design and considered how I could use them as a way of portaying feelings. The mohikan was quite a unique design feature, i decided that it could change shape or position dependant on the mood of the character. For example it could curl up if the character was shy, turn into a question mark if puzzled, expand into a hairy mass if scared etc. Again i also put an emotion sensor on it's body. This would change shape and colour dependant on the mood of the character. For example a red heart to symbolise love, a red/orange firebolt to symbolise anger etc. The mouth could also close and the nostrils could produce steam when the character is angry. Below is a detailed illustration of my desired character, with explanitory annotations of the different individual features. I developed designs for the front, back and side views of the character.

I then designed these characters using Illustrator. I used gradients to give a 3D appearance, and changed the opacity of paricular elements that i wished to be more transparent. Below are my final designs for my character.

During the development of my character I started to consider other elements such as the environment and script. I thought about a really urban environment, with skyscrapers and narrow alleys. It would feature human characters as well as robots. There could be some sort of 'car chase' where this main character is chased around the city. When he gets up to high speeds he could been shown as traveling just above ground level, and he would hold an advantage over others due to the flexibilty and movement that he demonstrates. He can swerve around corners, and become narrower for travelling down tiny alleys.

I would like to use the emotion qualities, by letting him experience a range of settings and environments. I didn't produce a script for this character, and did no futher work to develop my ideas, instead I considered new ideas, for which I could produce a 90 second animation.