I’m obsessed with character design, so I studied character design more during pre-animation work. Not only animation production requires preliminary character design. Designing a good, compelling character is just as important in games as it is in comics. Designing a successful character is definitely not an easy task. I think being a good character designer requires the following abilities
- Associative ability. You can come up with more reasonable characters based on the script content and character keywords.
- Summary and induction ability. Through text description, the characteristics of the characters to be designed can be summarized, and reasonable color summary and character shape simplification can be made.
- Control of geometric shapes. Character designs of different body types have completely different effects. Flexible use of different geometric combinations will make the characters more vivid.
In addition, the basic skills of painting are also very important. A solid understanding of the human body will make character design much easier. On the basis of having solid basic skills, the designed character movements can be more intense.
Additionally, I’ve summarized the steps required to design a character:
(1) First have a preliminary idea and determine the basic text setting of the character.
(2) Use the shape as the first draft, use geometric shapes flexibly, and draw several first drafts to determine the basic image of the character.
(3) Search reference materials according to the settings, find relevant information and refer to it to further enrich the character image.
(4) After the character image is finalized, draw the elevation and three views.
(5) Finally, design the character’s standing posture, running posture, expression, etc. according to the character’s personality to perfect the character.
Before this, I tried to design many characters and insisted on drawing characters based on some keywords and stories every week. Designing characters really interests me and I’m working towards that goal.