Character design and understanding

The were previously educated on the subject of character design and its importance with Sara our new one of our new animation tutors that specialises in character design and has previously worked with Ardman as a character developer, we learned about the importance of what designing was and the importance the shape of the character and there looks have on people. We learned that the softer cartoons use a lot of soft and smoother shapes based on the character as do the adult cartoons, but for these they use squares and rigid shapes which gives the character more of a serious look and meaning. I was told that ideas, thumbnails, sketches are very import because they are said to help plan out an idea thoroughly so you have a clear understanding of what you would like to communicate, we have talked about needing to keep Target audience, genre, Technique and movement, this allow the artist to keep the character designs they do simple and straight forward because they only have one focus and understand what needs to be done.

I personally develop my own character using these methods of planning, I use a variety of shapes for particular characters, personally I like drawing serious characters so I tend to draw a lot odd rigid  shapes. One thing I need to do is practice human forms so I can get used to drawing the human features properly when designing my characters because I have recently gotten rusty with drawing the human form so I need the practice drawing natural bodies if I am to improve. I personally like the talk and it went well because, Sara explained things that I never considered and help widen my mind to exploring newer practitioners who possess different styles and different ways of developing characters but use the same methods of true arounds and laying out their work.