The Master Taoist

This was my final for my Character Design class at The Art Institute of California -- we were each assigned to create a character from the old Chinese tale "The Monkey King" in the style of the cartoon show "Kim Possible", using a specific voice actor as a design reference, providing four headshots, a head-design breakdown, a main body pose and five action poses. I was given the task of creating The Master Taoist, using the actor Mako (the old wizard from Conan the Destroyer, and the voice of Aku), so I came up with this. I was pretty flattered that after the instructor graded our pieces, the class voted my work as "Best Overall Character Design", woot!
Man, this class was fun! And they are having additional workshops on the subject next quarter which include colorsheet breakdowns and actual animation work, as long as I can pull the time I'll make a point of going to those.