Chapter 1: Introduction to Character Design

Overview

For as long as people have been telling stories (and, eventually, writing books), they have verbally and with the written word created different characters to populate their fictional worlds . The beauty and strength of many of these character descriptions is that much was left up to the listener's or reader's imagination . With the advent of television, movies, and now video games , however, things have changed. The medium is visually describing the characters and environments for us as an audience. While our perceptions will still be unique to each of us, those perceptions are now closer together than they have ever been.

As an audience, we are getting more sophisticated in our expectations of visual imagery. When we were children, Frankenstein (Figure 1.1) was quite terrifying. We had probably never seen such a frightening creature, and none of our childhood experiences could have caused us to imagine anything like it. The movie was trying to take over our imagination and make us see exactly what it wanted us to see.

Figure 1.1: The Frankenstein monster.

Eventually, as we grew up, those creatures were no longer as frightening, and we wanted more scare for our movie dollar. In the early 1980s, Star Wars was released. Here was a whole universe based on one man's vision, and he wanted us to see exactly what he wanted us to see. To a large degree he succeeded, because we all know what Darth Vader looks like and we all equate him with evil. The desire of creators to have us see their individual vision carries on to this day in movies like Tomb Raider, where there is very little room for the leading actress to add to the character's personality. We already know what Laura Croft looks and acts like. Some of these characters are so strong that they actually become cultural icons. The original Frankenstein is a good example of a character's staying power.

Nowadays, there is less room for our imagination to create unique images within our heads when we are presented with such visually stunning creations. Increasingly characters are so well designed that the images and ideas they convey are relatively the same regardless of each viewer's background.

With this power to take over another's imagination for a short time comes a responsibility to do it well. You do not want to be remembered as the character designer of one of the silliest characters to ever grace the screen or monitor; you'd like to be renowned for creating one of the most memorable ones. Think back on some of the movies with characters that enthralled and disappointed you when you were younger . They could have scared you nearly to death, sent your imagination soaring, or seemed so ridiculous that you were either disappointed or bored. We all have our favorites. Some characters that had excellent character designs were those in the movies Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Alien, among many others.

On the other hand, there is a movie called Robot Monster, made way back in 1953. The main creature in the movie was a man in a gorilla suit who was wearing what looked like a cardboard, old-fashioned diving helmet, with car antennas glued to the side. It looked something like Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2: The 'Robot Monster' sketch.

It is so ridiculous that you can't help but laugh . This is definitely an example of bad character design.

Very little has been written on what direction you should take when designing characters for the screen, games, and print. This may very well be because we are so individual that it is hard to quantify what makes a good character. What is good character design for one individual may not be for another. Most of the character design process itself is based on rather ambiguous ideas of what is creative and what is not.

Have no doubt; character design is an art. The fleshing-out of a character is successful to a large degree when you apply traditional artistic principles to a creative idea. Most of us who desire to work in the entertainment industry (whether in film, games, or something else) are just expected to know how to flesh out a character when we graduate from school. In addition, most of us just assume that because we can draw a dragon or an elf, we are character designers. After all, we have been drawing monsters, villains , soldiers, and heroes for as long as we can remember. The sad fact is, however, that artists , even good ones, are not necessarily good character designers.

Like all of the arts, character design has its own set of fundamental skills that if mastered will make artists better designers. Until very recently, most art schools did not offer a curriculum that dealt with the basics associated with good character design. This area is often overlooked in schools possibly because, as with many of the arts, there is no one way of doing something correctly in character design (as there is, say, in chemistry ). The problem with this approach is that artists are left to their own devices to figure out their own working methods . This approach may work for some, but most of the time, artists spend a lot of wasted time and effort exploring dead-end avenues, and for many, there is no success without direction.

Most students want a set of rules or techniques that they can work on mastering. After mastering the basic skills, they then have more freedom to accept the premises taught, or they can reject them and explore their own directions. Almost always, success is quicker when you know and can work with some fundamental ideas.

For this reason, this section presents a series of 'basic rules' that, if used, will improve your abilities as a character designer. Most of the ideas are not original in and of themselves . The uniqueness of this section lies in the fact that the ideas have rarely been combined together into one section on character design.