Character Design part 6

From the past three weeks I had lessons in creating characters. As I mentioned the first week lesson was to make characters that was given to us(LINK to my previous post on the first character design lesson), and I said I have lost my paper. Well I have found it in the most unusual places(my laundry bag :() and here is my image of the first lesson.

If you need to know what they are here is the LINK to the previous post.

The second week was about using shapes to create characters and each shape actually have specific uses, the main shapes for creating characters are Squares, Circles and Triangles. Squares are used for strong and heroic looking characters Circles are used for soft cuddly characters and Triangles are used for dangerous evil characters. By looking at the two images at the bottom I believe I need some work on using shapes to help create characters.

The third week was to use a type of guide bone structure to help create the characters body and position. I felt that this tool was quite useful because it really help me to get an idea of the length of the arms and legs of the characters. We practice this by using pictures of actual characters like Disney's Hercules, Danger Mouse or in my case Tigger.

Once we have figured out the bone structure of the character when then have to make a female version of them, which was quite tricky because a females anatomy is different from a males anatomy. At the top left corner of the image is my female Tigger, which wasn't very good compared to the female Tigger in the center that the tutor had drew.

Finally to end the third week we had to do a side view of another iconic character, I've got Obelix from Astrix and Obleix. This is meant to show use that side views are more different from front because it you look at a fat person from the front you would think they would have a bulging tummy but from the side their tummy is actually quite flat. Same can go to chins from front it looks like it is pointing out but from the side it is quite close to the neck. Sides are also help in giving a character some form because in real life peoples legs are shape in a way that the body doesn't collapse so we need to transfer this into our characters show they don't have a physic that looks like they can collapse any second.