The aim of the module is to produce a substantial *piece of work within a defined specialist area of study.

Pre production for Specialist Study in Level 6

Aims (What is the goal/plan? Or an anticipated outcome?

Video Pitch

self-promotion and specialisation

Character design...In this pitch that I presented I wanted to show knowledge and understanding of a variety of industrial models, practices and processes that takes place in the pre-production phases of animation making.Since characters are the main focus of stories either for animations, games or movies I wanted to explore and focussing on this specific area of pre-production which is character design.

"The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be."

Chuck Jones

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/chuck_jones_2.html

"I try to design characters that would be interesting. If you create a character that you honestly like, chances are other people will too"

Gez Fry

Computer arts magazine

December 2006

The evil personality of the character was enhanced in postproduction with a dubbed in voice by veteran character actor...actor james earl jones

The star wars archives, book by mark cotta vaz and shinji hata

1995

Believable Compelling sophisticated and interesting characters

For my 1st semester of the 3rd year I will be looking into character design. My main focus will be to understand the fundamental artistic principles that are often overlook and how to incorporate them.

The uniqueness of a good character design

practical issues and limitations:

precise specifications:

how will the characters be used?

how will the character be displayed?

how close or distant to the camera will the character be?

how big or small is the relative to others characters?

will the character be animated?

how many angles will the the character be viewed from?

how much movement will the character have?

how faster or slow will the character be moving?

will the character be close enough to see facial expressions?

will the character need to speak

how much detail will you need in the hands, feet, hoofs, talons, paws, etc.?

will the characters be simple or complex?

who does the character need to appeal to visually?

can the character stand on its own design if taken out of its environment?

is the character's silhouette or profile readable on its own?

how will the character animate?

Memorable characters are ordinary enough for the audience to relate to them. They are flawed. Their flaws make them concurrently unique and accessible.

There is “something” about their design and their personality that makes us want to know more about them and makes us empathize with their plight. This is called appeal.

In the short, we rarely even know the character’s name. Still, they stick with us for the same reasons. Memorable characters are characters that we care about.

The test of a good character is that he cannot be replaced in the story with someone or something else. Replaceable characters are flat. You can swap them out (a boy for a girl or a squirrel for a squid) and it doesn’t seem to matter to the story; but, when you find the right character, it is difficult to extract him from the story because it is his story.

A story is defined by the character. More specifically, it is defined by how the character reacts to the situation he is in.

Action never just happens. Action is the result of thought and emotion.

This is a golden rule of both literature and film. “Telling” means the use of exposition or description without engaging the emotional or sensory experiences of the character. Showing means to make clearly evident, by the appearance, behavior, action, or reaction, the emo- tional experience of the character.

1 Functional

Form - construction:
An animated cartoon character benefits the animator greatly if it has an understandable, mostly logical form.This giant is not really a design. It is a bunch of stock animation forms put together in proportions that suggest a large character. It is strictly functional for animation.

We have to be able to move the forms around in space and if the forms don't work from different angles, are sloppily constructed,the animation is wobbly and unstable - unless we use cheats to get from one disconnected mess of details to the next.


Simplicity
There is a reason that classic animation evolved into simple sensible forms. To make something move you have to draw lots and lots of drawings, so you have less time to spend on details.

Also, the more details you have, the harder it is to control them as they turn around in space.
The more corners and planes you have in your design, the harder it will be to control them in motion.

When a complicated head turns, all the planes and details will shift positions on the head and make the character seem like he is melting.


Can Be Moved Easily

If your characters are designed for function, then your animators will have an easier time doing their jobs.

But being merely functional is not enough to me, to be a characterdesign.

Animation design, because of its need to be functional and easy to move, has a long history of being generic and repetitive in design.
Character design can benefit from some other ingredients.

2 Aesthetic

Pleasing Balance Of Shapes
Some artists, like Craig Kellman have a natural affinity for styles and shapes. They have pure design eyes.
Gene Hazelton took a generic cartoon Baby structure and used his good eye for balance to compose the features in a pleasing way. He also drew the details with a nice combination of curves and corners. Pebbles is not really a design. She's too generic, but Gene applied a lot of style to these drawings to make it look more like it has a design. Gene has designed some very distinct characters though. Here he is pleasing Joe Barbera, who liked conservative shapes.

A talented stylist can make a generic design look much more pleasing. Style is different than design.Chuck Jones has a natural eye for pleasing shapes and forms. He understands construction and in some of his designs, used strong contrasts of forms, shapes and proportions to create animatable, yet distinct and beaitifully balanced and designed characters.
Irv Spence too.
Tom Oreb

Note that these designs are more designs than they are characters. They look good, but don't say a lot about the personalities of the characters-with the exception of Wile E. Coyote.

The more graphic a character is, generally the less it is a character and the more it is a symbol. That's why I think designy characters work best in commercials and ultra short cartoons, where the emphasis is not on story or personality. There are exceptions of course.Ed Benedict

Character designs that are true characters and not just good looking objects with faces, need other traits.

3 Distinct From Other Characters - Recognizable

As I said, many cartoons are designed generically-that is using either non-distinct shapes like circles and ovals, or taking one type of design that might have had some specificity at one time, but after being copied and re-used over and over again has become generic - like the hook nosed mustachioed villain.

Here are a couple model sheets where the characters are still based on classic animation construction, but either the shapes themselves or the details of the features have enough variations to make the characters not look perfectly generic.

If you want your character to have distinct traits, he or she will have to contrast against the other characters. Your characters should be made out of different combinations of shapes, proportions and details.

4 Personality

This is probably the hardest and most important element to get into a graphic design for animation. Personality is contributed by so many creative people on the team-the voice actors, the storyboard artists, the animators, the director...but the designer can suggest personality just by how the character looks, before you know anything else about him.


Here is a generic character being frightened by a specific character.



This is the kind of design I gravitate most towards, and it's why I prefer Ed Benedict over say, Tom Oreb. Ed's characters suggest living beings.You know something about them right away just by how they look. Some designers create purely for aesthetic pleasure, and that has its place too - but not in character-driven cartoons.

A lot of times, my own characters come out of random doodles I scribbled out on a bus or at dinner on a napkin. If I find a scribble that makes me think of a personality. Then I develop it further.

5 Originality

It's hard to think of many animated characters that are super original. Most evolve from previous characters. The more distinct they look, the more "original" they are. If they are generic, or they look just like another character you've seen before then they are not very original.

Here are two very distinct characters. I'll try to think of more.

Madame Medusa is pretty distinct, but only one human in history could have animated her! Lots of people have imitated bits of what she looks like and how she moves since.


Here are some characters that have none of the 5 properties above that I think make up good character design.