Exercise: Concept Design

Brief

This exercise is an exploration of some of the current concerns of Concept Art. As you will probably not have access to the latest technology, this is a lo-tech approximation of the principles of Concept Art such as character design and world building. 

These are tools you might need:

• Digital and traditional drawing tools

• A camera for the photographic composition of shots and angles and lighting for reference

 Now choose one option below to develop:

• A character: think of their body type, features, costume and props.

• A vehicle: consider its size and functionalities within the narrative theme.

• A building: is it an urban site or set on a moonbase or other fantasy location?

Creating an A3 ‘style sheet’, explore the size and appearance of key features from the front, back, side and other relevant angles, not forgetting to consider the silhouette of your chosen character, vehicle or building.

Extending on from your initial design, make a mind map exploring ideas around your character, vehicle or building such as locations, spaces, atmosphere, life forms, nature, wildlife, urban structures and spaces, transportation, lighting, culture and social structures; key situations and moments. 

Collate relevant reference images that might visually express aspects of your world. You could experiment with these by collaging your character, vehicle or building into these to start thinking about ‘world building’. If you are using digital media, you could practise scanning and grouping the elements on your page organising the range of viewpoints.

Finally,explore the environments connected to your completed ‘style sheet’ by drawing five thumbnails placing your character, vehicle or building in different landscapes and exploring viewpoints and lighting in these various locations.Take about 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete each one of your thumbnails.

Intention

For this exercise, I am going to create a character. I don't know all the details-- yet. But I think I'm going to aim for fantasy as the genre, and probably try to do a main character.

I'm going to do my research first, then move to sketching, planning, then style sheet. From there I'm going to keep building...

Research

For this task, I really wanted to do my best and push myself; so I did a bit of research on how I can go about the thought process and design of characters, and how to showcase them.

The key aspects of character design is:

1. Focus on functionality; what is the character made out of, and where will we find our character-- what elements of the character can indicate that, will it be the clothes, their race (whether robot, orc, human or anything you desire).

2. Intention; what's the character doing? Will they be fighting someone (wearing armor)?

3. The theme and their story importance; showing their personality through their character design is important as we need to understand the character as we see them.

4. Style of product; more if I were working with a specific company with a specific style, I'd have to change my style to suit the product.

1

When starting a character design it's important to research beforehand, especially when it involves historical elements since you want to get it accurate as well as stylized. Gaining as much knowledge for what you're designing is key, it'll help give you more ideas and expand them; not only that, you can give other ideas to other areas of design that can help elevate the product.

Moving from there, you will also elevate your character design by creating a mood-board and collecting references. Gathering images that inspire you or give you ideas on the look and feel of the character will instantly improve your process, it'll give you initial ideas the will be improved on as you draw up sketches-- instead of that horrible blank page you'd be staring at as you think of ideas (if you hadn't of done it).

Two other important things-- if not vital, is your sketches and colour palettes. Plentiful sketches to keep your generating ideas and to give you client (and yourself) more decisions of the character design-- pick and choosing what you like for the character. Colour palettes are important in telling us what the character is like, are they royal (vibrant, strong colours), or are they evil (dark colours, iconic green for Disney villains). 2

When it comes to the sketching phase and bring your character together from your research, some ways to create stylized elements that'll grab your attention and show personality through your character are:

Identifying your characters shape

Does your character have wide hips, or skinny legs? Changing a character body according to their occupation or personality is a great way of showing their story; e.g, a knight having broad shoulders and a muscular figure. Depending on your style, you can also exaggerate shapes of the body to better suit their personality, e.g, a cunning person having pointy edges to their body.

(3, pg 19)

You can also explore this with their facial shapes and their expression to capture their personality, this will make the characters more stylized and can give the character a stronger presence. E.g, a villain having a sharp point to their face, or a goofy character having a rounded bean shaped head.

(3, pg 38)

Gestures and poses

Are the character bold, scared easily, or happy go lucky? Poses are a great way of showing that immediately, exaggerating these elements can impact the character storytelling and helps us engage with it more easily. To help use a line going through the character to emphasis a curvy in your sketching phase, this will also help your characters feel more fluid in it's action/pose.

(3, pg 27)

Process of character designing

To explore how the experts create their characters, I explored further in my books and online for a guide on the process of designing.

1. The Idea; generate what the character will be.

2. Research; explore what inspires and "gather your visual library".

3. Thumbnails; simple shapes to indicate where you want to start and how you want to represent your character.

4. Basic Shapes (Silhouettes too); start gathering what thumbnails stood out and expand on them, a key silhouette is important as the clearer the silhouette the better the character design.

5. Adding details; add small story details in the way they look, what their clothes look like, what they may hold with them.

6. Expressions and posing; show their personality, what's their attitude.

7. Values and Colour; what colours represent them, their personality, their status?

8. Final Design; combine them all to create the final design.

(3, pg 58-65)

Your research and mood-boarding is the main ingredient, you can add a lot of personality through the clothing of your character; especially if you struggle with adding detailing in your work; from you research you may pick up on traditional items that you can change up and develop into an item your character may use.

An important design tip I've learnt as I was researching the basics is to add small, medium and big shapes in character designing; it makes the character feel more fleshed out and creates some dynamic shapes in the designing process.

How to showcase:

Once you've completed your design you need to showcase it! 'Turn arounds' are extremely important to the director/creator of the product as it will give them a broader idea of the character and can help transform that character into 3D form (if needed).

A board of your character doing different poses and interacting with different things is also key, it'll help give an idea of what the character acts and their personality-- which can also help develop the story and give the character a richer story. (You may even design other characters or background characters to help enrich the world you're creating.) 4

Idea Generating

Character Mood Board

Thumb-nailing/Sketches

Character Sketches

Character colour-scheme

I asked multiple friends and family which was the best colour scheme, and the pink and green was the one that was picked more often, one of my friends had an excellent point that it would depend on where the character lived (if she was in a city then richer colours, or if she was in a small cabin in the woods then mainly greens)- with that point in mind I was really stuck with the design since the character was constantly on the go since she is trying to pay off debt with someone and is constant travelling city to city; but ultimately I stuck with the most popular.

Style Sheet

World Mind-Map/Mood Board

*Click to zoom in

I wanted a world where they create beautiful buildings based around art nouveau, slightly overgrown and lit with candles in coloured lanterns. The wildlife would resembles one like ours but animals I've included in the mind-map are more common-- and mostly pets. The social systems is run by a King and a Queen that both govern the city they're in; and they celebrate changing of the seasons and the day the city was founded. The way people would get around is by horse, some with elegant carriages (depending on "social status"), and other with a simple carriage.

Exploration of the world around my character

I attempted to create some world aspect that is inspired by art nouveau, I trialed some emblems that could be the crowns emblem; including some buildings, furniture and lighting.

Thumb-nailing my character within the world

I tried my best to capture different compositions and situations to fit the brief.

Evaluation

I went all out for this exercise, I really wanted to push myself to be a better artist and experience what ti would be like to be a character artist (since it's a avenue that I would like to explore), creating a character that was well-thought out was really important to me.

I feel like with the character design the execution was really good- there was some feedback that it has a me vibe which I cannot unsee now and I feel like that is detrimental to the design now.

The thumbnails for scene of the character interacting is decent, I’ve improved drawing-wise as I try and capture perspective and creating different angles and emotions of scenes. I wanted to capture her kind side as well as her assertive, sneaky vibe; I really like the one where’s she being kind to a child and the sneaky in front of the market stall. The other thumbnails are okay, they explore some of the environment and the transportation, worldly pieces that flow with the character design.

I had so much fun during this exercise, I’m not sure if I went too far on some elements of the task and not enough with other parts— but I really enjoyed it. I feel like the research benefited me as I was able to apply the tips and tricks that professionals used to create my character, I tried my best to create a cool character but I feel like it's just a bit basic now that I look at it.

Maybe I should revisit this exercise another time to do a different character, or explore more of the character but changing the race of the character to maybe an elf or a creature.

1 Trent Kaniuga, Youtube 'What every character designer NEEDS TO KNOW', Jun 9th, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGtR14xSV-E Accessed Apr 16, 2024.

2 CG Spectrum, CG Spectrum 'What is character design?', Oct 17, 2022. https://www.cgspectrum.com/blog/what-is-character-design#:~:text=In%20film%20and%20games%2C%20a,their%20subtle%20quirks%20and%20idiosyncrasies. Accessed Apr 16 2024.

3 3dtotalPublishing, (21 Jun, 2018) Creating Stylized Characters: 3dtotal Publishing

4 Proko, Youtube 'Level Up Your Character Design with Knight Zhang', Jan 21, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjiKlLE3NuI Accessed apr 16, 2024.