Thursday, October 23, 2014
Designing with a Purpose - Mark Kennedy
This is a great post by Mark Kennedy on his personal process for character design.
CONFESSIONS OF A LAZY CHARACTER DESIGNER – Mark Kennedy
Character Design is an art and a discipline and I totally admire people who are good at it. So I am not writing this post to share all my wonderful knowledge or anything, but heck, I'll do my best to share what I've learned from my limited experience in this arena
Here are the criteria I try to meet when doing designs:
CONFESSIONS OF A LAZY CHARACTER DESIGNER – Mark Kennedy
Character Design is an art and a discipline and I totally admire people who are good at it. So I am not writing this post to share all my wonderful knowledge or anything, but heck, I'll do my best to share what I've learned from my limited experience in this arena
Here are the criteria I try to meet when doing designs:
1. It should be something I understand in three dimensions and that I can draw from any angle. It should look appealing from every angle.
2. The design should lend itself to expressive expressions and poses. Those expressions and poses should be appealing as well.
3. It should look as original as possible; not like something you've seen before.
But as far as that last one goes - everyone has a different idea of that. Obviously my designs aren't exactly ground-breaking or shockingly fresh and original. But I do try very hard to make sure I'm not repeating something I've seen before.
5. The character design should describe the personality of the character.
I'm a big believer in the idea that when you look at a design, you should get an immediate sense of what that character's personality is. It's just like in live-action: directors cast actors who are going to bring a physical presence to the role and look like what the audience expects the character to look like.
There is a big difference between the types of actors cast as leading men and those who are "character actors" who tend to be cast in the supporting type of roles over and over.
If the designs of your characters don't work well in telling the audience what type of personality they are then you have to do extra work in informing the audience what they are like. The best characters are ones in which the design, voice acting and animation are all unified and work together in concert to create a great character. The sooner the audience can hook into exactly what type of character they're dealing with, the quicker they can engage with the story and focus on the events that are unfolding instead of trying to decipher what type of character they're seeing.
2. The design should lend itself to expressive expressions and poses. Those expressions and poses should be appealing as well.
3. It should look as original as possible; not like something you've seen before.
But as far as that last one goes - everyone has a different idea of that. Obviously my designs aren't exactly ground-breaking or shockingly fresh and original. But I do try very hard to make sure I'm not repeating something I've seen before.
5. The character design should describe the personality of the character.
I'm a big believer in the idea that when you look at a design, you should get an immediate sense of what that character's personality is. It's just like in live-action: directors cast actors who are going to bring a physical presence to the role and look like what the audience expects the character to look like.
There is a big difference between the types of actors cast as leading men and those who are "character actors" who tend to be cast in the supporting type of roles over and over.
If the designs of your characters don't work well in telling the audience what type of personality they are then you have to do extra work in informing the audience what they are like. The best characters are ones in which the design, voice acting and animation are all unified and work together in concert to create a great character. The sooner the audience can hook into exactly what type of character they're dealing with, the quicker they can engage with the story and focus on the events that are unfolding instead of trying to decipher what type of character they're seeing.
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