PIXAR'S TIPS FOR DESIGNING A SUCCESSFUL CHARACTER When a Pixar artist is designing a character there are a number of areas they explore to ensure a successful character design. Research, Reference and evaluate It can be helpful to Study life references to evaluate and look over key characterisits. When Disney animators where creatign the characters for the lion king they brought in Live lions and the character designs sketched them and sure those sketches are the primary point of departure for Simba. https://ohmy.disney.com/movies/2015/04/14/8-amazing-behind-the-scenes-photos-from-the-production-of-the-lion-king/#Andreas-Deja-Brings-Scar-to-Life It is also helpful to look at characters and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them. Visual impact Whether you're creating a monkey, robot or monster, you can guarantee there are going to be a hundred other similar creations out there. Your character needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people's attention. Exaggerated characteristics Exaggerating the defining features of your character will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identify the character's key qualities. Colour Colours can help communicate a character's personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Conveying personality Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character; its personality is key as well. A character's personality can be revealed through animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn't have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Expression Expressions showing a character's range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure's emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Building back stories If you're planning for your character to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character's back story can be more interesting than the character's present adventures. Fine-tuning a figure Question each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived. |
CHARACTER DESIGN
What is character design? Character Design is Character creation, the process of defining character for a game, movie or adversing. Character design focus on the appearance, poses, manerisms and gestures of the character. (from Pixar) Character design is a vital component of Pixar's work. Character is what drives the story and breaths life into a film. Pixar's character designers work with the director as the script is still being written to bring the characters to life through many phases and changes until they have created the perfect character for their story, Process of Designing a Character Pixar's artists use tradition media to draw the initial design of their characters. An artist typically does hundreds, sometimes thousands, of sketches before they are satisfied with the design of their character. At Pixar, character design begins with pencil sketches. Sometimes the artists have a clear idea about the character, sometimes only a vague notion of the character’s personality. The character designers draw thousands of pencil and marker sketches to refine the look of each character. Pixar has to decide how cartoony, how iconic, and how realistic they want each character to appear. The Basic 3 Step of Creating a Unique Cartoon Character Design
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Step one
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Find a photo or an original drawing as the the primary starting point for your Character and begin adding lines tom create the line drawing that describes the character in illustrator. This is your design phase, so this is the time to change or exaggerate any features you want
In my tutorial at the bottom of the page i show you how to do the line drawing but the following website is a good secondary source http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2012/11/photoshop-cartoon-tutorials.html |
Step two
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take your illustrator line drawing to photoshop and begin add in colors
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Step Three
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Add any finishing touches... like a background etc
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AssignmentUsing a photo or drawing for inspiration. Students will create a character. The character will be composted of different hierarchies of lines (an art element) and basic shading. Students are encouraged to exaggerate/ design any features (for example of they want larger anime eyes, they can incorporate it) this character must be an original design! No rendering of an already two dimensional character will be accepted.
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Tutorial |
Rubric |