Character Design - Module Overview [University]

In this project, I looked into character design and creation. I undertook research into artists and professionals in the industry to understand their processes when they create characters to help me create my own for this brief. I looked at a variety of aspects that must be considered when creating a character, such as shape psychology and silhouettes, which help convey the character’s personality to the audience through their appearance alone.

Creators I researched included Josan Gonzalez, Vera Rehaag and Hayden Aube. Josan Gonzalez was one of my main inspirations for this project since his work is cyberpunk-based, the same theme of my character. I used his work to look at his designs and reflect on his use of line, colour and shape, as it makes his work very distinct and recognisable. Vera Rehaag and Hayden Aube were excellent for looking at their design processes. The pirate task was a good workshop to help understand how answering a few questions can help you learn more about your character and show this newly developed personality through their design. Rehaag’s work was great to see her design process, how she started with reference imagery for the character’s appearance and personality, and then how she develops them from their, ultimately ending with the final turnaround sheet. I used the questions mentioned earlier as a basis from which to start from with my character after the main brainstorming was completed, allowing me to learn more about the character I intended to make and think of how I could show their personality through their design.

Towards the end of this project, I created my final character sheet(s). I used Vera Rehaag’s work to consider what I needed in my character sheet, such as the reference lines for proportions. At the beginning of the project, I had only planned to create the one design and reference sheet. However, as the project went on, I found that the character I was creating wasn’t able to express in the way I wanted them to since they would be very stoic. Therefore, I thought they could have a second form, allowing them to emote more. This led me to create the second reference sheet and research more into primates for it. I used Procreate for the iPad throughout this project as it allowed me to easily sketch down an idea I had at any time and I could quickly source images from the internet to use as a reference.

The design of my character took a lot longer to create than I was expecting. It was difficult for me to get the proportions of my character accurate in the way I wanted, and I was trying to make the design too complicated. In the end, I used a reference picture to sketch over with my character and their design so that the proportions would be accurate, before moving on to create the first reference sheet. This meant that a lot of time in this project was spent trying to get the design of my character right. I couldn’t work on the colours or smaller details of the character before completing the design, meaning I was losing more and more time that I could spend on other areas such as accessories and gestures.

I had initially planned to have a third form of the character. As I was in the developmental stage of my character, I liked a lot of the monkey aspects of them, and wanted to include this more into the design. However I also liked the police android that I was already working on. To get around this, I thought I could have the police android develop into the second form, as it has in this project, but then also have my character look like a monkey in the final form. I had planned to make them use synthetic skin that could be placed on the outer casing of the character, akin to that of Ava from Ex Machina, but with fur instead of skin. This is so that I could more of the monkey personality shown through the appearance, as the second form is still limited by the design of the body. Due to lack of time left, I didn’t manage to achieve this.

Speaking of which, due to time constraints brought about by the creation of the character itself, I was unable to add in a lot of other things into my project. There are many ideas from my initial personality sheet/list that I had wanted to explore further on in the project to help reinforce certain aspects of the character, but was unable to do so. These include exploring hobbies/interests (instruments), props/asset sheets, background and environment creation and weapon design. I had also planned to create a small, looped idle animation for my character and an interaction animation, such as the example by Vera Rehaag where the character interacts with the butterfly. All of these elements would have fleshed out my character more and bring out their personality better.

Should I have had the time to do so at the end of my project, I would have tried testing out the design of my character in different styles, such as in the style of Rilla Alexander or Brosmind. Similarly, I wanted to try alternate techniques of realisation, specifically making a physical model of my character out of something like clay. This would have taken a long time though. I could always look to create my character in a 3D program such as Cinema 4D and print them out using the 3D printer at university.

A benefit of having research character design and the processes in this project will help me with future industry work. I will be able to add the turnaround sheets I have created to my portfolio, as I believe they are polished and presentable. I will also be able to use the knowledge I have learned about character creation for any future works in which I will need to create a character.

Overall, I am happy with the work I have produced for this project, however I would like to have included a lot more. If I’d managed my time more effectively, I think I would have been able to develop my character even more to the stage that I had imagined and would have been able to include a lot of the parts I had missed out that I’ve mentioned above. Since the character has already been develop this far, I think I may continue to develop the character more in my free time. Since they have a fairly fleshed out backstory already, I could continue to develop their design, maybe simplifying it, and they could become a sort of recognisable container character for me.