Friday, August 10, 2012

Quick lesson in Character Design

During the week I was assisting a student in my beginning Character Design 1 class at the Academy. He was doing pretty well with his initial design but it lacked interest and appeal. The artwork below shows the progressive direction I gave him.



Figure A is my reworking of his original design. Getting the basic form of the concept in order and making sure that the drawing is solid. Figure B is my push on the design. Figure C is an alternative approach involving the merger of the head and body into a unified overall shape. There are many other ways to approach variation in character design even if you're working on a single idea. Fully explore the look instead of settling on the first version you do. You'll be surprised at what you discover.

4 comments:

fanimation said...

Thanks for hints like this Charles, one of my biggest problems is getting settled on a character design before I have explored all the possiblitys. I move to color before I even have the character nailed. I need to work on this! Your help on this blog is very much appreciated!

E.A. said...

Came back to read more of your posts Charles. Love it here.


I hope you post more of your 80s work, if you can manage to do that! That, I think, would be kind of cool.




ENOCH

Unknown said...

Hey Charles, I just did this sketch earlier today and I took some inspiration from one of your drawings of Crash:
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n620/NYankeesFan95/b50cabfd.jpg

Any thoughts?

Charles Z said...

Pretty good sketch Pat. I see some Crash design influences. Thanks for checking in Enoch. Always good to hear from you. Lots of 80s stuff on the way. John that's a very common issue with a lot of character designers. I emphasize the importance of exploring possibilities as well as being patient and taking your time when drawing concepts. There's no need to rush the process. Relax and have fun with it.