Welcome to Ms Borgersen's digital art class

the Job of a Character Designer

A character designer(or character artist) creates the entire concept, style, and artwork of a character from scratch. This often includes a deep look into the character’s personality to develop a visual idea of the character’s physical features.

Creating an entire character from scratch(human or otherwise) takes a lot of creative energy.

​But typically the character design process starts with a briefing of the character. The character could be a mutant turtle with ninja-like abilities, or just some person who lives a simple workaday lifestyle.

With this briefing there’s often a series of suggested traits be they physical or emotional, and the character designer uses those notes to start thumbnailing ideas.

Modal Sheets/ Character Board

In visual arts, a model sheet, also known as a character board, character sheet, character study or simply a study, is a document used to help standardize the appearance, poses, and gestures of a character in arts such as animation, comics, and video games.[1]

Model sheets are required when multiple artists are involved in the production of an animated film, game, or comic to help maintain continuity in characters from scene to scene. In animation, one animator may only do one shot out of the several hundred that are required to complete an animated feature film. A character not drawn according to the production's standardized model is referred to as off-model.[2]

Model sheets are also used for references in 3D modeling to guide proper proportions of models.[3]​

​

What does a Model Sheet Show

Model sheets ensure unity. They show the character's structure, proportions, attire, and body language in multiple different poses and sketches.  These typically have multiple sketches (simple line drawings) on the same sheet of paper with one  fully rendered. Often, several sheets are required to depict the character's subtler emotional and physical attitudes


Modal sheets show
  • Proportions
  • Emotions
  • Gestures
  • Overall form from all angles​

Assignment: Create a model sheet

Using a character from your story.  (The story you created for your environment design) create a character modal sheet.  You will be designing up everything about that character, their gestures, poses, physical features and attire.  Below are some questions to help you flush out a character bio so we can identify the important characteristics of the character that need to be visualized.  

​

Examples: KIKI the TRansfromed Koi

ENVIRONMENT Design

Character Bio

Examples

KIKI
The tenacious Koi that relentlessly tries to swim up the dragon falls despite many obstacles.  Through perseverance she makes her destination and turns into a golden dragon.  

Character Model Sheet

step one: Collage/ hand sketched

Step two/ finalized line drawing

Step three: at least one rendered I colored

Assignment

after flushing out your character sheet decide what aspect of your character you will be exploring.  Their form, emotions, Story transition, etc. Collage or sketch three different views of your character that illustrates the aspect you are showing in this modal sheet  Only one will need to be  rendered in color, but all three will get good line art, in illustrator.  You choose when rendering which you want to illustrate your main with paint in photoshop or vector shapes in illustrator.  

Tutorial