Today, we were incredibly lucky to have been given a lecture by director, writer and animator - Sara Barbas. The lecture itself focused on mainly character design and short story telling, overall I found the lecture to be enormously insightful and a lot more technical that I imagined before hand. However, I was pleased about this as I learnt a lot and feel like my knowledge of the topics covered was vastly improved by the information she was sharing with us.
The first topic Sara discussed with us was the more theoretical and more informed side of character design. Stating that the design of the character and the design decisions that have been made leading up to a characters design must be informed and serve the story. She followed up by saying that is important that even if not explicitly shown in the story or animation, that the characters you are creating have a backstory. I've heard this before, whilst reading various articles and listening to designers talk about their process - I think this is something that is very well utilised within industry and can be largely helpful when trying to obtain and understand the characters that as a designer you're creating - whether it be their motives, personality or areas of their aesthetic and appearance. Sara then went on to describe a basic process that is quite universal in a design sense:
Ideas -> Thumbnails -> Sketches.
Following on from this idea of process when designing, Sara put a big emphasis on the idea development stage where she mentioned that undertaking research and utilising reference material was key and hugely important when initiating ideas. When Chris Sasaki did a guest talk last year, he too put emphasis on the importance of research when designing characters which was his specific skill set. He said he took around a week to two weeks researching before he starts and drawing or putting pen to paper, and hearing this again from Sara reminded me of its importance. The next topic Sara talked about was style and functionality. Under the style and functionality umbrella three main points were made, considerations that must be thought about whilst developing characters from a more functional and theoretical perspective; target audience, final platform, genre, technique and movement. Making sure you know and understand these things when developing ideas is essential to making sure the characters and story mesh together in the right way. For example, if the target audience is pre-school children then the characters must be suitable for that particular audience, they must be engaging, interesting to accommodate for a shorter attention span, and they have to be likeable and not inappropriate for the younger age group. In terms of genre, ideas and designs have to work with the genre so they don't look out of place and again, move the story forward. Unless it's an extreme case. Finally the consideration of technique and movement, so will the characters body shape and proportions accommodate the type of movement that you're trying to achieve to portray the character in a certain way, and within the medium that the piece is being created in. Sara then introduced us to a concept that I personally have never seen or read about, or at least had it explained in this way. She spoke about 'three core shapes', essentially circles, squares and triangles that when used as the core shapes of a characters body and features, give them a certain feel and induce certain emotional responses with the audience that they are engaging with.
Circle - Friendly, Affectionate, Cuddly
Square - Masculine, Logical, Intelligent
Triangle - Villain, Plotting, Evil, Harsh
Another thing to note is that mixing shapes can create complex and interesting characters. Asymmetry gives characters depth and weight, again adding a new level of complexity to them and at the same time giving the audience perhaps an unfamiliar or original character shape which in turn creates a new dynamic for the story and characters.
Recognisability is also incredibly important when designing characters. A good way to test to see if your character reads well and the pose is to look at the character as a silhouette. Silhouettes have been mentioned by both Sara Barbas and Chris Sasaki whilst they have been talking about character design which again, as they both have industry experience makes it's importance and usefulness very real. A silhouette is a good way to look at shape and proportions in a new way, helping you spot mistakes or flaws in the character if there are any.
Sara then gave us a list of key elements that are useful to remember and use in short story design.
- Character Driven.
- Flawed Character.
- Urgent Goal.
- Interation with other characters/props.
- Twist in character's surprising (yet coherent) reaction.
"Have the character do something surprising, but not out of character."
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