RdP "Animation Studios": I. Preproduction- Character Designs

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I. Preproduction- Character Designs

C. Character
Once the script and story is done, characters and locations of the story can be visualized by the concept artist depending on the characteristics of each character, the mood of a location, and the director's (that's you!) vision of how each element in the story should look like.

ROUGH sketches and gestures for my first film "EGG"
these poses need work! wahahaha... oh well... we're all learning.

Turnarounds for Mr Mani, of "I am the Superhero".

A character turnaround is extremely important for animators when a character is finalized; Even when working alone, they serve as guides during animation! You will thank yourself for doing them especially at the crack of dawn, where the sun's rays hit your retina at its most vulnerable state! But anyway, you typically you can make a front, 3/4s front, side, 3/4s back, and back view, but you may also add top and bottom views as well, depending on the requirements of the storyboard, which may or may not be done while this process is going on. I usually finish the turnarounds first before I move to the boards. Again, they make great references.

If you notice, I also added some style guides on how hands, eyes, noses should look in this short film too, that way other artists designing other characters for the same film will look like they belong in the same film!

Anna preliminary style guide for Tuldok Animation Studios' "Libingan".

A character comparison is also good to see the proportions of one character with the other!

Once I have more than one character, I get their front views and place them side by side, to check how each of them compares with each other in terms of proportions and size. You may notice the blue circles beside Anna's head, those are about the same size as her head.

Miscellaneous aliens from "Galactic Space Patrol"

When designing characters and making a size comparison, or size comp, I like to measure them by heads than by actual units of measurement. (I wasn't too good in physics and science after grade school!)

next: backgrounds!

in the meantime, check out these amazing character artists and site:

Arthur de Pins
Francisco Herrera
Alberto Ruiz
Character Design blogspot

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Animator purist warning:

Ever since I have been making cartoons, the most common question I got was "How did you do that?" Well, to everyone who asked, here ya go, this is for you, and for anyone else who is interested.
I must remind you though, what you will read from the following pages is not the official way of making animated films.

As the art form that animated filmmaking is, I believe there is no one, correct, cure-all method of creating your own animated story.

There are however, tried and tested industry standards and technicalities from which you can use as a training ground or even use as your own method. And it is these techniques which I studied and eventually tried to replicate in the independent setting (not much $$$) which has led me to form my own techniques in creating an animated film.

With that said, what you are going to see is how I work in creating my own animated stories, using commercially available software and hardware. I must stress, that these are not rules set in stone, but I offer them to help those who are interested in creating their own animated film.