Character Design Development (continued)

Both Colin White and Justin Wyat gave similar advice regarding character improvements. Apparently hero's and villain's heads had "problems", one looked like clayed onto design and another failed to convey the personality correctly. So having put some thought I came up with some ideas.

I had to make hero more human-like, so the audience could empathize with the character more and recognize him as "the good guy"

And for the villain, quite simply ( and I don't know why I didn't do that from the beginning) I just had to keep the same design logic with the head as with his body - more edgy, sharp triangular shapes.

I'm not quite sure if these are working perfectly, I wouldn't hesitate to change anything if it be more communicative. So I guess I’ll wait for some feedback or a good idea to come.

Other than that, this week’s assignment was to write a dossier for each character, sketching out whatever detail might be important.

And I quite used it. Before drawing test expressions I’d read it so to respond to it when creating expressions. So further follow few examples of that for each character. I didn’t want to rush myself with this, since really, I’m only beginning to get to know my characters, their construction. It does take a while to get your head around their shapes and how they’d change in a particular reaction… I felt my brains swollen…:D

Character Design Development

These are more developed character designs for Aliens and Monsters topic. We're meeting Colin White tomorrow and He'll give us some feedback about our designs, so I tried to bring all the ideas I had till now(whether its about texturing, props or color, not only just shapes)in these drawings, so he could perhaps suggest what's working what's not. For example only one character is textured, because fur is his distinctive attribute.

Character Turnarounds

These are the turnarounds for my three characters. Hopefully it's not even necessary to say whish is which, cause they read clearly :D  But we'll see after tomorrow's lecture with Justin

Dead point

Its been three weeks now and so far I have only a vague idea of how the villain might look like. Its easy with the sidekick, I have few ideas, but the hero.. I had no strong ideas of how the hero could look like so far... These are the developmental drawings I did, however, non seem to offer the solution..  Well, today I'll be concentrating on that more and hopefully some good ideas of shape/structure and just a direction of hero's design will come. This is a collection of some sketches..

Character design: Lecture 3

This lecture was al about the skeleton of the character and the differences in anatomy of male and female characters. The task was to deconstruct the structure of well known characters (here are examples, of Jafar, Hercules, poppey ect.) and then attempt to create a female version of it.

Vilain and Sidekicks design visual reference research

I'm going for two distinct feels in character design. For aliens I've researched bugs, insects and bacterias. The visual research boosted up my designs. I saw lots of new shapes and more important,  what feel it brings.

Character Design Lecture 2 : SHapes in design

 Diskussed By J.J. *Jolanta Jasiulionyte*

The second lecture of character design covered the importance of shapes in design.

Shapes are important in a way it can evoke a particular feeling and perception of the character.

To give few examples,circle is used mostly to create a feeling of security, harmlessness and cuteness. Its only because in our life the shapes that are round have this meaning. For example babies.

Contrary to that triangles are used to create uneasiness and a feeling of danger. Like Justin Wyatt explained, its deep in our subconscious – man is scared of sharp things and understands it as potential threat.

And squares should evoke a feeling of strength, reliability and security. Just like architecture is stable , so can  a design look,  made using lots of firm squarish shapes.

But the true designing begins when one try’s to employ a variety of shapes to convey the personality of the character. A great example Justin Whyet gave us was Obelix’s design.He’s a gentle giant, so the two main shapes used in his design are square for the upper part (firmness) and a circle for the lower part (soft and harmless).

After being  acquainted with shape purpose in design we were given a task to draw few designs using variety of shapes.

To see more examples of  theory application for character designs done by J.J. *Jolanta Jasiulionyte* go here

Basic Plot and Influence Map for Character Design Project

There are few things to do before starting to think about villains, sidekick’s and hero’s character designs. We were asked to first think of what is the basic story in whicg these characters play.


The project asks to create these three designs for a Saturday show’s cartoon series.This means the show is family-friendly, and the genre is suited accordingly. So its necessary to think what’s a good approach for both the story and the design.






My words were Aliens and Monsters. And the story is simple:


There’s a planet where tyranny of evil ruler takes place. He’s a powerful vilain who’s much pleased of the extent of his power and feels the need to see evidence of it all the time. He’s accompanied by a loyal servant – his sidekick. In all his characteristis he compliments the Tyron –week and silly, he’s a mere follower, but faithful and concerned.

But like in many stories, there’s a hope for the people to be saved by a strong-harted hero. A trutfull, optimistic, a bit naive fighter for the good of people.




So far I think the idea and the feel of the story resembles that of Samurai Jack (Tartakovski, Genndy; 2001-2004).

The story doesn’t lack of action, humour but at the same time there’s the epic feel , since all the series emphasize and add up to the same goal – To defeat the evil ruler Aku. But the seemingly meaningful idea behind It soesn’t stop from making the animation highly stylized anf full of suggestive design decidions ( textured planes stad for fields of trees ect. )

I  imagine my character design’s to have freedom in style.


Just to give a glimpse of what I have in mind I collected some images on the influence map.

I was looking at all the most amazing designs of aliens and monsters, which still try to keep a good level of believability by paying attention to details (texturing, proportions, final resolution). I’d be reaching for something much like that, impressive original design but enough complex and finessed.  

Introduction to Character Design

Today we were given a brief about Character Design unit. It asks to produce a three fully resolved character designs of a hero, villain and the sidekick in a particular set of random genres. The pro second part of submission is to produce a Character design  & Animation Bible which contains the three designs, synopsis of the story, turnarounds, expression sheets and completed tasks of weekly character design lectures .

So my set of genres is:

Monsters and Aliens

Having further discussed with Justin Wyatt, an experienced Disney's character designer, who's lecturing us for this unit, the first thing to do is to come up with a story, what will direct the further research, development and production of the designs. 

But before we engage with the project, today we had first lecture on Caracter Design in which we were asked to come up with designs for random  characters;

The first character I got was : Peaceloving cheerleader

The second was Insectoid football hooligan