I've been thinking about the design of the robot and have decided to use the construction industry as inspiration. I decided to make a moodboard of images related to the vehicles and equipment used in the industry to get me started ...
Construction Vehicles and Equipment Moodboard
After looking through a plethora of images related to the construction industry, I started to sketch some possible body parts for the robot ...
Robot body part sketches
Next I began thinking about how I will animate the robot and pondered about making the character design similar to that of the redesigned Rayman character from the fairly recent Rayman Origins game. Rayman's body parts are completely separate from each other which allows the animators to create a snappy animation style. Thinking about my own character, when it comes to importing the robot into After Effects, it will be easy to draw the body parts on separate layers in Photoshop and import the document straight into After Effects and finally animate each body part that way.
Robot Concept
Robot clean up in Photoshop
Robot 'Colour Map'
Robot Colour
Robot Colour (+Dodge and Burn)
Next I have to import these body parts into After Effects and begin animating them.