Prep, Lecture 1, Assignment 1 for Character Design

Any students of this class should have already seen these at: deviantart-academy.proboards.c… copy is for archiving purposes and any non-students who want to read it.

Recommended reading and other pre-Jan-1st prep:

1. ***I cannot emphasize this first one enough: make a folder on your computer and save there any helpful reference images you find on the internet. You should already be doing this for every major art project, and if you aren't, start immediately. I personally have a folder for each type of animal I've researched, one for male characters, one for female characters, one for anthro characters, one for faces, one for hands, one for poses, one for clothing, one for anatomy references, ane for architecture, one for tribal tattoos, one for celtic knotwork, etc. Google image search is the main place I look for reference images.***

2. This class will ask you to draw both male and female characters. If you usually draw all one gender, you may wish to practice the other gender before the class starts. If desired, locate a tutorial or reference showing how to draw a person of this gender in your preferred style.

2b. If you particularly want to do something that isn't the usual male or female (hermaphrodite? three gendered species?), we can probably find room for it, though I think I need to insist on at least one male and one female character, otherwise it would defeat the point of the exercise.

3. This class will ask you to draw characters of varying body types. Specifically, a very skinny character, a very muscular character, and a fat character. If you have no experience with drawing one or more of these body types, find yourself a tutorial or reference image and try it out.

4. This class assumes you have a project for which you need to design a cast of at least six characters. Examples of such a project: a comic or manga, a video game, an animated movie, or any other kind of illustrated storytelling. If you don't have such a project in mind, you will need to make one up. This does not have to be complicated. Some people may have pages of worldbuilding or even a full script, but all you really need is a phrase like "gothic mermaids" or "anthro starship crew" or "historical fantasy scottish clan" or "egyptian animal-head gods". If anyone wants help brainstorming their project please describe the sort of help you want in the discussion thread. You may want to name your proposed characters for ease of discussion and your own labeling of related drawings (but it's not required).

4b. If your project idea calls for you to draw something you don't usually draw, such as a type of animal, or a mecha, or a type of earthly race, or a whole art style like gothic or disney or superhero or D&D/warcraft, once again, go get yourself some reference images.


Lecture One:

What is character design? Character design is not just creating characters. It's creating characters who have functions within the context of a project, the project's theme and worldbuilding, and the other characters in that world. It's also creating characters who have a function within the context of the audience. Character design is a sub-set of concept art. Like most kinds of design it is "iterative": alternating cycles of brainstorm-sketching and narrowing down to one or a few clean/final drawings (or models if you are working in 3D). If this were a class that had written tests, you can be sure "Define Iterative Design." would be a test question because it is a central concept of this course. The single main goal of this course is NOT to make sure you design a nice cast of characters, it is to teach you the PROCESS of designing a nice cast of characters and the reasons for the different parts of the process, so you can do it yourself in the future as many times as you want, customize to process to what works best for you personally, and maybe even teach someone else the hows and whys of this kind of design process.

So, what kind of functions can characters have?

Firstly, the appearance of a character has a visual storytelling function of conveying that character's personality, gender, age, race, and profession or other role within their society. Many of the design choices made in creating a character, from body build and body language through hairstyle, clothing/accessories, and color palette each contribute a small piece of the over-all statement made by the character's appearance. (Color palette is listed last mainly because of the fact that some comics and mangas are still produced in black and white, so character designs for that type of projects need to be considered finished without having been colored. However color can be a very powerful ingredient in character design for all non-grayscale projects. Even students creating characters for a grayscale comic will be expected to do the final colored picture of your cast, because this kind of thing makes a good cover or advertising image for a grayscale series. If any students happen to be color blind we can figure out how to compensate for that when we get to the week where we start coloring.)

Secondarily, a character may have a symbolic role within a story. Some symbols, like angel, death, judge, ringmaster, etc. are quite literal and represented by a specific historical costume. Some symbols, like a character who is visibly a hybrid of two races, a character who represents poverty within a specific society, a character who is a shaman or mystic of a fictional religion, or a character who is a soldier in a fictional army, need to be designed in some detail by the artist because they don't have a pre-existing specific costume. Fortunately once this sort of designwork, like creating a uniform and logo for an army, is done it is often useful for several characters, or even multiple projects in the same setting.




Assignment for Week One: Each student should brainstorm and describe the purpose of their cast of characters; is it for a comic/manga, a computer game, a movie, or what? What are the atmosphere and themes of the world these characters will exist in? What are the conventions of how characters are drawn in this style, e.g. proportions, type of linework, degree of realism or symbolism of facial features. Students should begin compiling a folder of style and anatomy references.

Although you may use words to help you clarify your own thoughts about these questions, the main thing you are doing is collecting a folder of references for your own use throughout the rest of the class, and also drawing your own references such as stick figures/mannequins and other sketches. In an in-person class I would require all of this to be turned in, but online it is problematic to upload what could easily be more than 10 megs of files. So, what I want to see is: One or more collages of reference images and/or sketches you feel capture something about the style you want to use, the world you want to create, or a character you want to create. You might make one collage per character, perhaps by putting an anatomy reference for that character in the center and surrounding it with other images relevant to that character, such as hair styles, jewelry or tattoos, clothing, any animalistic anatomy you want to incorporate, etc. Or if you have two or three clear factions or races, you might make one collage for each. Your target art style would also be a good subject for a collage or a comparative study showing how the target style's proportions or linework are different from realism or your usual style.

IMPORTANT! Please mark each image with a number or letter for ease of discussion! Label the whole project with your username, a short description of what your project is, and what art style you intend to use/any other design goals you want to achieve with the cast of characters for the project. Here are the general guidelines for the cast of characters you will be creating, though it is not necessary to decide all this in week 1.
- Total cast should be at least six characters.
- Your cast of characters should include at least one male character and one female character.
- Your cast of characters should include at least one skinny character, one plump character, and one muscular character.
- Your cast of characters should include at least one character from a different culture, faction, or species than the others.

- It is optional to include names or written descriptions of individual characters; all you really need is something like: "Character A will be a tall muscular male of faction X whose personality is Y." Or: "I want to have 3 females of race Z and race Z's anatomy is like W."