Split over how to develop

I'm a bit stuck over how to start developing the character and what direction to take him. As I can see currently, there are two distinct paths. One is of complete random mania and the other is a more Adult Swim surrealism path.

My intention is to make characters which follow up both of these paths using a quick personality and some coloured pictures and then show them about to intended audience members and Tony to see which direction to continue in.

First colour of a 'ronnie'

This might not be what he ends up looking like at all, I'm just trying some colours out on some of my doodles.

EDIT: I've been told by a few of the potential audience members that I've shown this blog to that this kind of drawing of the character is very 'cartoonish' and doesn't feel very 'adult'.
This is concerning to me obviously because I wanted the character to feel like it could have a serious potential, or just not be disregarded as a kids cartoon.
How to solve this..? I'll come back to this post when I've gotten some advice or thought more about it.

Sketch Doodle ideas for character.

These are some doodles for ideas for the character, on his form and his actions. I'm using red curly hair here purely because that was the hair colour of the character given to me in the roughs Tony showed me.

The pig, Isreali and the boy in a dinosaur costumes are side characters I'm thinking of.

I'm finding it difficult to proceed beyond the point of just doodling the character doing random things because by default, the character lacks alot of definition and it's really difficult to tell what direction if any is a correct one.
I mean, alot of the drawings I've done here show 'Ronnie' (working name) with a very elasticated kind of body, showing explosive random potential through his form, with a sock puppet which he talks to so.. there is a 'random' mania element there or as some kind of goblin or animal or popular cultural icon like Shakespeare. The seperate elements on their own might be amusing and all but it's bloody difficult trying to pin him down. What I'm suspecting from alot of these drawings is that the character would end up being some screaming deranged mess which would satisfy the quota of being random I guess.
THIS kind of random:



Who knows, a completely manic character might work. But I would wager that the show it starred in would need a couple of other characters to counter and contrast it's personality. You know, like the genie from Disney's 'Aladdin'?. His character is built around the comedy style that Robin Williams is good at; fast paced schtick that changes direction constantly through various voices and impressions of personalities.


My guess is that without the blander personality types to distill 'Genie' through out the film, you would lose interest in him quicker.

Northern Design/T-shirt stuff

I've taken my own spin on.. my own spin of what I should do for these illustration submittals and will probably submit something that is a slightly more polished version of what you see here because these drawings come alot more naturally to the way in which I work.

What you can see below are drawings I've taken just based on people and things I see when I'm eating in a cafe or sat on a bus. Pretty dull sounding stuff sure but it suits me so, you can go sit on it.

There are a couple of doodles of some of my friends dogs there too as well as my parents and my brother. I'll mess about with the images and select or make some more if I feel I need to but, I think if I presented them well enough, most of these drawings would be more than suitable.