Reflection

What have you learned in your research that inspires your own ideas or interests you?

I learned that I am very influenced by the media I consume, like TV shows, movies, video games, and books. I find that my designs are often an amalgamation of a bunch of different bits of other characters where the inspiration is clearly visible. This is because I often find that certain aspects of an existing character really fit with the identity of the character I want to design, and so I include it in my mood board for inspiration, but do not copy it. I realize my process of creating characters is often like forming a puzzle where every bit of the character is included for a specific reason that is symbolic to their personality or motivations. With Stan, I previously discussed how his outfit reflects the loneliness he feels because he's dressed so plainly and boring due to there being a lack of excitement in his social life. The same could be said about the wisp's design where my peers were able to immediately identify which form was evil or good, due to the pointed features and narrowed eyes of the evil form and the warm colors of the good. I feel that being able to give a reason for every characteristic within a character's design helps to strengthen the character's design and identity, but it could be done by the viewer's own intuition without me having to say anything, that would be even better and mean that the character's design has done effective visual storytelling on their identity and purpose.

How do I feel about how it is going?

I feel it's all going very well. Character designing is my favorite part of animation because it feels like I'm playing a fun game of puzzle trying to visualize all the concepts and ideas for a character's appearance, personality, and motivations I had roughly imagined. It always feels rewarding when I have created a character that embodies the concept I set out to achieve in designing, and when the outcome is something exciting or something I didn't initially imagine. I am particularly pleased about the wisp's friendly design because just from looking at it, it appears to be something, small and light, heavily due to its cute and fae-like appearance shown through its transparent wings that emit a gradient of orange and yellow light. I am also really pleased with how well Stan's design came out, because as much fun as I had to try to create a character who was a "loser" on purpose, that term is a bit subjective and vague when it came to character design. I didn't want the character to look like a stereotypical high school nerd shown in Hollywood movies because that would seem shallow, but just someone who didn't look like they were the main character of their own life. I feel that Stan's character manages to be plain and boring because of how ordinary he looks with a simple outfit, and unenthused expression but still appearing unique due to the striking colors in his appearance and hunchback.

How can I apply what I have learned?

During this stage, I learned to create moving, rotating turnarounds for each character design. This can be extremely useful if I wanted to do stop motion because it gives me a better idea of the character model should look from different angles. This would really help when I need to apply the details like patterns or specific accessories to a model. Compared to a turnaround sheet, an actual moving turnaround feels like the character is put on a rotating disc and tells the viewer how they would look in different angles while remaining in the same proportion. Learning to make rotating turnarounds for a character also helps me to determine whether a design and especially outfits are plausible or not from all angles. Because sometimes, a design may look good in the front, but may not work in the back. For example, if the wisp's final design did have a physical ring as a part of its body as opposed to just a ring of light its body emits, where would the ring be connected to its body? Would it be connected as an appendage or a wearable accessory? Either way, while the front looks really cool, it would look clunky from the back as I would need to figure out how the ring is floating alternative next to the wisp without making it a part of its body. Finally, moving turnarounds have forced me to draw and make sure characters are in proportion, this is good training for me because I find it difficult to be able to replicate the same character continuously, they often look like different people when in different positions. Learning how to draw a character in proportion is important to helping me maintain the character's size and appearance throughout different settings and next to other characters.

Character design

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