December 14, 2009
Jon Burgerman's 20 Character Design Tips
1: Research and evaluate
It can be helpful to try and deconstruct why certain characters and their characteristics work and why some don’t. There’s no shortage of research material to be found, with illustrated characters appearing everywhere: on TV commercials, cereal boxes, shop signs, stickers on fruit, animations on mobile phones, and more. Study these characters and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them.
2: Design and plan
Where will the character be seen and in what medium? This will have a direct bearing on how you go about your design. For example, if the character is for a mobile-phone screen, there’s no point designing it to have a lot of intricate details and features. Nathan Jurevicius says, regardless of the format, “The process of thinking up concepts always starts the same: paper, pencil, green tea... lots of thumbnails, written ideas, scratches and sketches over sketches.”
3: Who is it aimed at?
Think about your audience. Characters aimed at young children, for example, are typically designed around basic shapes and bright colours. Find the genre, is it a sci-fi, fantasy, horror, realistic, cartoony, videogame, or comicbook style? If you’re working for a client, the character’s target audience is usually predetermined, as Nathan Jurevicius explains: “Commissioned characters are usually more restrictive but no less creative. Clients have specific needs but also want me to do my ‘thing’. Usually, I’ll break down the core features and personality. For example, if the eyes are important then I’ll focus the whole design around the face, making this the key feature that stands out.”
4: Visual impact
Whether you’re creating a monkey, robot or monster, you can guarantee there are going to be a hundred other similar creations out there. Your character needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people’s attention. When devising The Simpsons, Matt Groening knew he had to offer the viewers something different. He reckoned that when viewers were flicking through TV channels and came across the show, the characters’ unusually bright yellow skin colour would grab their attention.
5: Line qualities and styles
The drawn lines of which your character is composed can go some way to describing it. Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character. Sune Ehlers characters are bold and seem to dance on the page, which echoes his approach to drawing them. He explains: “Drawing a doodle is about decisive pen-manoeuvring. A strong line for me comes from strength and rhythm.”
6: Exaggerated characteristics
Exaggerating the defining features of your character will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identif y the character’s key qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and helps emphasise certain personality traits. If your character is strong, don’t just give it normal-sized bulging arms, soup them up so that they’re five times as big as they should be!
7: Colour me bad
Colours can help communicate a character’s personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Comic-book reds, yellows and blues might go some way to giving hero qualities to a character.
8: Adding accessories
Props and clothing can help to emphasise character traits and their background. For example, scruffy clothes can be used for poor characters, and lots of diamonds and bling for tasteless rich ones. Accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character’s personality, such as a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder or a maggot in a ghoul’s skull.
9: The third dimension
Depending on what you have planned for your character, you might need to work out what it will look like from all angles. A seemingly flat character can take on a whole new persona when seen from the side if, for example, it has a massive beer belly. If your character is going to exist within a 3D world, as an animation or even as a toy, working out its height, weight and physical shape is all important.
10: Conveying personality
Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character; its personality is key as well. A character’s personality can be revealed through comic strips and animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn’t have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Personality can also be expressed simply in how the character has been drawn.
11: Express yourself
Expressions showing a character’s range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure’s emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Classic examples of this can be found in the work of the legendary Tex Avery: the eyes of his Wild Wolf character often pop out of its head when it’s excited. Another example of how expressions communicate motions is deadpan Droopy, who barely registers any sort of emotion at all.
12: Goals and dreams
The driving force behind a character’s personality is what it wants to achieve. This missing ‘something’ – be it riches, a girlfriend or solving a mystery – can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. Often the incompleteness or flaws in a character are what make it interesting.
13: Building back stories
If you’re planning for your character to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character’s back story can be more interesting than the character’s present adventures… or not, in the case of the Star Wars prequels.
14: Quick on the draw
Don’t be afraid to experiment and ignore all the rules and tips about planning and crafting the look of your character. Going against what is supposed to be the right way of doing something could create unexpected and exciting results. When artist Yuck creates his characters he doesn’t really know what he’ll draw. “I just listen to music and draw the result dependent on my mood: freaky or cute. I always want to have a drawing that I find interesting. I then work more on the character after it’s okay with me and my brain,” he says.
15: Hone, plan and polish
Instead of just drawing or doodling without too much pre-planning, Nathan Jurevicius prefers to take a different approach. “I take a long time creating finished looking roughs and also thinking about how the character could be expanded beyond a 2D artwork, what the character will do in a specific world, and how it speaks and acts,” he says.
16: Drawn in mud
Having decent materials to work with is useful, but not essential, for the early planning of your character. A lot of amazing characters were successfully designed years ago when no one had personal computers and Photoshop was just a dream. The drawings of your character should still work when rendered on paper with a simple pen or, as Sune Ehlers puts it, “The character should still be able to work with a stick dipped in mud and drawn on asphalt.”
17: Real-world drawing
Ian, of I Like Drawing, generates some of his characters away from both the computer and the sketchbook, allowing outside elements to influence his work. “I really like characters that interact with their surroundings,” he says. “The environment normally suggests an idea and then I let my strange mind do the rest. I prefer drawing in the real world with a pen instead of on the computer, because it feels good and odd things happen.”
18: Release the beast
Show people your creations and ask them what they think. Don’t just ask whether they like them or not. Instead, see if they can pick up the personalities and traits of your characters. Find who you think is the suitable or ideal audience for your work and get feedback specifically from them about it.
19: Beyond the character
In the same way that you create a history for your character, you need to create an environment for it to help further cement believability in your creation. The world in which the character lives and interacts should in some way make sense to who the character is and what it gets up to.
20: Fine-tuning a figure
Question each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived. Illustrator Neil McFarland advises: “Think about the meaning of the word ‘character’. You’re supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they’re like to meet and how they might move. I think it’s strange how creating characters for the sake of it has become a distinct branch of graphic design.”
See the Art of Jon Burgerman here.
Aurora Over Yellowknife - Click To Enlarge
Sometimes, after your eyes adapt to the dark, a spectacular sky appears. In this case, a picturesque lake lies in front of you, beautiful green auroras flap high above you, brilliant stars shine far in the distance, and a brilliant moon shines just ahead of you. This digitally fused panorama was captured earlier this month from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, and includes the Pleiades open cluster of stars just to the upper right of the Moon. Since auroras are ultimately started by solar activity, this current flurry of auroras is somewhat surprising, given the historic lack of sunspots and other activity on the Sun over the past two years. This time of year is known as aurora season, however, for noted average increases in auroras. The reason for the yearly increase is not known for sure, but possibly relates to the tilt of the Earth creating a more easily traversable connection between the Earth's magnetic field and the magnetic field of the Sun's changing wind streams.
December 13, 2009
Millions see crazy wormholes over Norway
No-one has come up with an explanation for a very strange sight over northern Norwegian skies early morning local time yesterday or just before 6 pm Australian time.
But millions of people saw it, and thousands of videos and photos were taken.
The phenomenon last about 10 minutes. In this link to a gallery of photos the captions indicate the different locations in northern Norway from which it was simultaneously observed, some of them from places where the sun is nearly over the horizon, and others where there is only varying degrees of twilight at this stage of the darkest weeks of the sub-polar night.
It began as a thin aurora like luminescence oriented with one end toward the point where the sun would either rise, or fail to rise, in the case of observers so far north that it doesn’t rise above the horizon until making a brief appearance in the middle of the day at this time of year.
Then the spiral halo began to appear. There are also knots in the blue or in some images greenish trail typical of the contrails made by missiles, fast jets and large meteors. The baselines between a wide range of observation points mean that the phenomenon had been generated at a very high altitude.
Russian authorities have denied Norwegian press suggestions that it was a missile test that produced a strange contrail. But perhaps it was a military laser or directed energy anti-satellite test.
Whatever it was, it should have been registered by a number of weather and spy satellites, and possibly generated ionospheric radio abnormalities that could give a better understanding of its nature.
Video update:
This YouTube, a compilation apparently including part of one recorded in a Norwegian household struggling to get to work on time in the darkness of an Arctic morning, is among the many now being posted. Dreadful quality, but that’s what immediacy in on-line media is all about. It is as rough as.
And the spiral object exhibits motion, spinning like a Catherine Wheel. (That’s it, an alien Catherine Wheel gets lost in space and stumbles upon Tromso…)
And the explanation (most likely) is…
…the one Abelard and Michael Slezak have pointed to. A hat tip and bow to ‘Clairedeluna’ or space scientist Claire Tourneur for her logical analysis and crucial additional images of a Russian rocket test that caused the Catherine Wheel from Earth (rather than from a far corner of the universe) to break the routine of the morning peak hour in far northern Norway.Her blog Blastrophysics is a fine discovery too, and has been added to the collection or blog roll on the right hand of your screen.
BBC report: Russia confirms failed missile test
December 12, 2009
14 Digital Character Design Tutorials
So to help you beginners out we've burrowed through our files and come up with 14 tutorials that'll help you polish your character design skills. From initial sketches through to finished characters and the advanced matters of making them move or turning them into vinyl, flat-pack or even plush toys, this collection covers all the bases, with advice from experts including Peskimo, James Jarvis and Christopher Lee. Enjoy!
1. Design and build a flatpack toy
Use one of your favourite character designs to create a flatpack toy you can give to friends and clients.
2. Character design: the Warbot MkIV!
Jonny Duddle reveals how to create a turnaround sheet for a computer game character.
3. Creating vector characters in Illustrator
Characters can add a recognisable face to your work. But how do you go from a sketch to the finished product? Peskimo talk through their process.
4. Animate your vector characters
Animating characters is the ultimate way of bringing them to life. Peskimo talk you through importing, setting up and animating in Flash.
5. Make a plush toy
Use a simple digital process and a variety of sewing techniques to make your own soft toy character.
6. Photoshop character faces
The faces of your characters, regardless of their final destinations, should be designed to facilitate changing emotions and diverse facial expressions. Derek Lea demonstrates facial awareness.
7. Creating the Bird God
Illustrator James Jarvis explains how he designed his new vinyl toy, and then turned him into a Computer Arts Projects cover star
8. Create an interactive web toy
Web toys are fantastic applications for generating buzz around a website. Peskimo show you how to create an interactive plaything with unique looks and bags of character that will make your site stand out from the crowd.
9. Virtual vinyl
The vinyl toy is now a truly iconic form of design, but it can be difficult and expensive to create a one-off original. Chris Weston shows you how to make a life-like design using Cinema 4D.
10. Add character to your virtual vinyl
Up-and-coming vinyl toy designer Chris Weston shows you how to use 3D skills to add personality to your virtual toys.
11. Digitally sculpt a vinyl character
Turn a funky character sketch into a detailed digital model suitable for rapid-prototyping.
12. Adding dimension to your characters
Are your designs looking a little flat? We show you how to make your creations leap off the page with startling dimension.
13. Build your character’s back story
Danilo Brandão reveals a simple yet effective way to breathe life into your characters by developing personality and creating their environment.
14. Real-world effects
Peskimo reveals how to put your vector creations out into the real world, using Photoshop and Illustrator to combine the illustrations in your head with the realism of the world outside your front door.
The Importance of a Simple Online Resume
In this day and age, it’s not just graphic designers and programmers who really benefit from having a simple online resume, it is anyone on a serious job-hunt, including 2D and 3D animators. I teach at an Arts and Technology college here in Nova Scotia and I'm always stressing the importance of creating a web presence. What's great with today's online technology you don't have to know any HTML code or programming skills or anything (it helps to know a tiny bit) to develop your own simple-easy-to-navigate online portfolio/resume.
I can't stress enough the importance of creating a simple, fast and effecient self-promoting website. Here’s why:
1. It shows you go the extra mile
Potential Employers are definitely looking at all angles of you when you apply for a job. Having a personal website, however simple, is a sign that you take some pride in yourself and that you take things the extra mile. Anyone can type up a resume or fill out a form, but less have the skill and confidence to say “want to know more? You can check out my personal website.”
2. It helps you keep yourself organized
Just having a Microsoft Word file of your resume sitting in your Documents folder doesn’t provide a lot of motivation to keep that thing up to date. But if your resume is up on the web for the world to see, you are much more likely to keep things fresh and up-to-date. Plus, having your resume online can serve as a great personal reference for yourself. Any time you need to cough up that data, you are nothing but a copy and paste away at any computer.
3. It makes you more findable on the web
Maybe not if your name is James Smith, but if your name is in the least bit unique you should be able to make yourself pretty “googleable” pretty quickly. Just buying yourname.com and linking to it from a couple social networking sites and you should be #1 for your name in no time. This is extremely valuable. If someone takes the time to seek you out, it is important that they be able to find you.
4. You can put it on your business card
If you have a personal business card, the URL to your resume is a great thing to put on it. This gives the person you are giving it to an opportunity to do something passive to learn more about you. When they pull your card out of their wallet/purse, they might not be in the place or mood to give you a call, but they might be willing to check out your website. Right there you have won some of their mindshare and that is a valuable thing.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Even if your website is a flashy light-on-dark swirly web 2.0 grunge masterpiece, when it comes down to your actual resume page, you should keep it simple. The information on this page should be as absolutely readable and accessible as possible and that means dark-on-white and normal sized web text. This doesn’t mean it has to be lame. You can design a beautiful resume within these parameters, just keep the flash, images, and heavy-design off this page. One of the major reasons for this is for printing. Sure, you can create a specific print stylesheet, but people will feel a lot more comfortable print a page that looks like it will print well. Plus, you can put a “Print Page” button right at the top.
Once you have your resume formatted, your images and other content organized, it can literally take one day for you to publish your own simple little portfolio, using WordPress.org and Blogger.com just to name a few. For more info on online portfolio creation and how to sign up for connecting yourself to potential freelance work download this package.
