OUAN406 - The Model - The Importance of Character Design

Currently, I'm lacking heavily in my ability to design characters in various ways. Looking at them, they lack a dynamic appearance in both posture and personality. My visual skills aren't up to where they should be and I often create very flat, unrealistic characters because of my lack of experience working digitally for example. Character design is an incredibly important aspect of not only animation but any story based entertainment, whether it's a film or video game, it is also a long and careful process. Characters that have held their own throughout the history of entertainment appear simple and seamless on the outside, but in actual fact a huge amount of work and man hours has gone into their production and creation. The better the characters are, the more successful the product is. There is a range of principles to consider when looking at character design, that encourages a successful idea, as well as a certain level of imagination and creativity that you need as a starting point.

Firstly, it's important to remember the audience when designing not just characters but anything that is going to be featured in a piece of entertainment. This is so the aesthetic and general style of the character fits well into the context of the piece that is being produced. As well as this, I think something that I personally need to work on and is very important when designing characters is the use of colour and using an appropriate colour scheme. The reason I think this is so important is because aside from the actual design and form of a character, I feel like the next biggest contributor to their overall aesthetic is the colour, because in itself it can help to communicate a characters personality. An example of this is dark colours representing malevolence whereas light colours represent purity. Finally I think adding accessories and a more personal touch to the overall design of a character can help bring it to life dramatically. This is a key to a characters personality, but gives them a sense of realism and authenticity that otherwise perhaps wouldn't be present. I also think that accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character and add interesting details to them.

Different artists have different process when approaching the designing of characters. I often watch video tutorials on people's processes when designing characters for example, or look into step by step demonstrations of various different ways of working. This has given me lots of different insight when approaching either a brief or something I'm doing in my own time, based on the purpose and needs of the piece. Some of the ways of working I have adapted from watching the way professionals work is always to include and use references when designing not just characters but anything. However, when designing characters there is certain aspects such as anatomy that play a large part in the design so using references here is essential to create an accurate and realistic design. As well as this, I have seen a few different processes being used when the actual drawing of the character is taking place. These include, doing a line drawing, or a rough sketch of the character either digitally or traditionally before taking it into a piece of software such as Photoshop before finishing it. I have also seen artists produce rough silhouettes of a form before working into it further, so getting a good idea for the proportions of a character is another approach to the designing of a character. Another design technique I have tried to incorporate into my own design work is the use of thumbnail sketches before deciding on compositions or design routes to pursue. Sketching out several different, small character designs for one character can lead to certain design choices being realised instead of just going straight into the designing of a character and only going down one possible route when there is in fact and unlimited amount of different forms just one character idea can take.