Character Design for Animation and Games

1. Character Design for Animation and Games Week 1a: Introductions to the course, Character Design Principles, and Photoshop Drawing

2. Welcome to the Course! Your Teacher: • 18 years teaching college art and animation for games and film, including at Pixar Studios. • 10 years in game development, including at Fire Hose, Bodsix, and Yaya Play Games. • Superhero initiative for the Boston Globe and Franciscan Children’s.

3. Welcome to the Course! Course Expectations: • Participation in all class exercises and discussions, including peer work. • All Homeworks submitted on time! They can be revised later if you wish, but please submit to Piazza even if not finished. • Final Portfolio by end of term will include all project PNGs, a single Photoshop file with all projects in labelled folders and layers, and your 3D character as a project folder and PNGs. • Optional Life-drawing sketchbook: draw daily and submit weekly to improve life drawing skills. Attend some MFA sessions! • MOST IMPORTANT: Communicate with the teacher! Stuck or confused or worried? Email the teacher right away!

4. How to Use the Course Site • TOP: Syllabus information, Teacher contact • MIDDLE: Weekly breakdowns and resources • BOTTOM: More course resources Before each class meeting, please feel free to peruse the posted samples and presentation slides, to prepare for the new material. Note at the bottom rows for: • Course books and events • Course software • Optional Life Drawing Lessons This site is regularly updated to improve language and resources. Is there something you think should be added or changed? Please email me!

5. Welcome to the Course! What is Character Design? “Quill”from PSVR game Moss

6. Welcome to the Course! What is Character Design? Making decisions that impact the audience’s understanding and enjoyment of the character. • Body and Feature Shapes: curved vs angular, contrasting forms (large/small, tall short, etc). • Costume shape, drape, materials, and how it hides, accents, or transforms the character volumes • Clarity: can the form be “read”– usually determined by the silhouette. Color helps! • Context: the environment detail and lighting can have an impact on character design. The environment itself can be a character! • Style: In the wide range of style choices, expressive/cartoonish vs realistic proportions is just one choice. • Anatomy: A grounding in human and animal structures allows you to more effectively and meaningfully play with forms, and when you don’t have the option for much costume variety. “Stevonnie”from Steven Universe TV show

7. Welcome to the Course! #1 Rule of Character Design for animation or games: You are not free to make whatever you want! There are CONSTRAINTS you must follow on any given project. What are they? “Cerebella”from Skullgirls game

8. Welcome to the Course! #1 Rule of Character Design for animation or games: CONSTRAINTS: • You are designing for an existing project, and your designs must fit the world as already designed. • You are designing for a particular audience, and you must create using forms and shapes that will make sense to that audience. • You have restrictions on size to fit the game space or level of detail to fit the animation or technology budget… “Old Man McGucket”from Gravity Falls TV show

9. Welcome to the Course! #1 Rule of Character Design for animation or games: CONSTRAINTS: You could make a lot of these assignments about practicing working on other artist’s styles… … But we will mostly be focused on developing your own artistic voice and muscles. “Mei”from Overwatchgame

10. Intro to Photoshop: Navigation & Drawing • Turning the program on. [Cmd]+[n]= new file. Settings: 12”x12”, 300ppi. [Cmd]+[s] to save file. • In Layers menu, create a new layer to draw. Create a another layer for colors. Layers can be moved up or down and made invisible/visible • [b] = brush (+[alt]=colorpicker), [e]=eraser • [ [ ] & [ ] ] = change brush size. Use hard brush and turn on pen pressure. • [Spacebar]=Pan, [z]=zoom In (+[alt]=Out), [r]=rotate • ColorSwatches (value is vertical, saturation is horizontal, hue in the side bar) and the Paint Bucket tool (under Gradient tool). • Selection Masks (rectangle, elliptical, lasso and polygon lasso). Draw or Fill. Move masked content, [Alt]+move to copy. [Shift] to make a perfect square or circle, or to add to a selection mask. [Cmd]+[d] turns off Selection Masks.

11. Exercise #1: Play! Try drawing with Photoshop in this new layer (avoid drawing on the initial “Background” layer). • Experiment with Brush and Eraser pressures and brush sizes, with colors, and with Selection Masks. • Draw on the entire page! Try Zooming in and out, try Panning, try Rotating and returning to normal orientation. • Layers can be moved up or down and made invisible/visible by clicking on the eyeball. • Show your neighbor!

12. Exercise #2: Initial Fear Any shape can be a character! We just need to add one thing. What is it? And how does adding clothes change a monster? • Turn to your neighbor and introduce yourselves. Share your initials (for longer than two names, choose two). • Share a childhood fear. What disturbed you as a kid? • Add a new layer to your Photoshop file. Hide the old layer/s. name the new Layer “fear_lines.” Draw your partner’s initials large on the screen, and turn them into monsters related to that childhood fear, adding elements that make them characters (eyes, mouths, limbs, fur, scales, etc). Consider overlapping forms to imply volumes. • Show your partner!

13. Intro to Photoshop: Painting • Add a new Layer at the top of your Layers, name it “Palette.” Search quickly online to find an image to act as your color reference (rightclick to save to desktop, open in Photoshop). • Colorpick ([b], then hold down [Alt]) 5-10 colors and paint them as small swatches into a small side area of this “Palette” layer. Consider main colors, lighter highlights, and darker shadows. • In the Layers menu, create a new layer and move it below the Lines layer. Call this new layer “fear_color.” • In this color layer, block in your main colors [b]. Then choose a direction for a light source and add highlights from that direction, and shadows to the other side. • Use PUSH PULL to soften the transitions between shades: Set your brush opacity to 30-40%. Colorpick the lighter shade, and draw multiple strokes “pushing” it into the darker shade. Colorpick the darker shade and use multiple strokes “pulling” it back into the lighter shade. Go back and forth until satisfied.

14. Art Class • For this course we are looking for Personal Progress: be brave in submitting and diligent in completing all work! • You will be critiqued on quality, but graded on quantity.

15. Iterate: The more drafts, the better!

16. Iterate: Oddworld Inhabitants

17. Start with Silhouettes: Form, Pose, Contrast We usually start a character design with silhouettes, to explore the big, impactful issues of form and pose without having to worry about details. If the volumes and details“read” well as a silhouette, they will likely work as a detailed painting! Strive for Contrast in your forms: bigger shapes next to smaller shapes, long next to short, curved next to angular, etc. Avoid the temptation of adding almost any interior details: show it all in the contour!

18. Start with Silhouettes: Form, Pose, Contrast Character Designers fill pages of sketchbooks with thumbnail silhouettes that are just slight variations of the same form, to work out a single character! Reasons for Making Silhouettes: • Try out a lot of small variations quickly, to see which read better (Against white or the project background, at intended scale) • Explore volumesfor INTEREST (high contrast) and CLARITY • Plasticity of Inspiration: if you build outward from a gesture pose, like adding clay! • Try multiple dynamic poses, to see how the form functions in motion.

19. Start with Silhouettes: Form, Contrast, PoseWhich of these designs strike you as interesting?

20. Strong Silhouettes = recognizableWith your partner, take 1 min to identify as many as you can!

21. Making Silhouettes: Work Inside-Out To paint a silhouette in Photoshop (or with a pencil or marker) avoid drawing outlines and filling them in. Instead, think of your silhouettes as adding clay to a skeleton. 1. Start by getting the character pose down as a gesture drawing: one line for the curve of the spine, one each for the hips and shoulders, a head oval, circles for all limb joints and lines to connect them. Consider dynamic and expressive poses, showing emotion and intention. 2. Build on this skeleton by adding volume with a big brush. Let the mass build outward, like adding clay!

22. Making Silhouettes: Work Inside-Out 3. Once you have the big masses of volume down, use a smaller brush to add details, like where pieces of clothing overlap or wrinkle at joints, fur, scales, tentacles, spikes, etc. Professional Character artists typically fill pages and pages with “thumbnail” (small) silhouette variations on just one character, to discover which of these volumes/ details/ poses can “read” best for that character!

23. Silhouette-to-Final Art 4. Choose your favorite silhouette, set the layer to <30% opacity, and in a new layer above draw detailed line art. 5. Colorpick a palette, add blocks of color in a layer below the line art. 6. Use Push-Pull to paint transitions.

24. Consider These Basic Shapes

25. What are the Shapes?: Spirited Away

26. What are the Shapes?: Up

27. What are the Shapes?: Wall-E

28. What are the Shapes?: Ratatouille

29. TERMS • PERPENDICULAR • PARALLEL • CONVEX • CONCAVE

30. Trust yourself and make mistakes! • Accidents lead to better ideas • Perfect is the opposite of good • You are doing a bazillion drafts anyway, so: DRAW LINES BRAVELY

31. Exercise #3a: Shape Monsters • Take a piece of paper, hold it horizontally. IMAGINE it is divided into 6 equal sections (3 on top row, 3 on bottom) • Draw simple, overlapping shapes in each of the six sections, using only squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, triangles, and parallelograms (convex shapes):

32. Exercise #3b: Switch and Draw! • Trade papers with someone NOT sitting next to you! • Draw monsters out of the shapes in each of the six sections. Add whatever you want– limbs, wings, tail, head, etc: the shapes can be the entire torso and head, or just the head, or just the torso. • Do as many as you can, about 5 minutes per

33. Exercise #3c: Cute What tends to make a monster cute?

34. Exercise #3d: Cute What tends to make a monster cute?: • soft • round • big eyes • furry • fat (baby, rubenesque)

35. Exercise #3e: Cute

36. Exercise #3f: Creepy What tends to make a monster creepy?

37. Exercise #3g: Creepy What tends to make a monster creepy?: • Hard • Sharp • skinny/skeletal • Tentacles • insect-like (many legs/eyes) • long claws • sharp teeth

38. Exercise #3h: Creepy From Sword Art Online Anime

39. Exercise #3i: Creepy From Monsters University Film

40. Exercise #3j: Discuss Group Discussions: break into groups of 2-4, view each other’s work and choose 1 to discuss that you find particularly interesting. Use the language of cute and creepy to frame discussion.

41. Intro Photoshop: Save, Export, and Submit: • Create a work folder in the Thaw space: Yourname_work (no spaces: underscore or HumpCap notation. Use only letters and number, never start with a number). • Create files as 12”x12”, 300ppi • Save your Photoshop .PSD work files, so you can make revisions later. • File/Save As: .PNG or .JPG file (creates single file with all layers collapsed, much lower size). Name yourname_hw#a.PNG (or .JPG) • Open new .PNG or .JPG in Photoshop, Image/Image Size: 72ppi(will automatically set pixels to 869x869, much smaller than the Photoshop work file). Save! [Cmd]+[s] • Upload result to Piazza in the homework # folder.

42. Homework #1: Monster Concepts • 12 Monster Silhouettes: 6 Cute, 6 Creepy. Save as PNG: 72ppi, width 1,000 pixels. • Detailed, colored drawings of 1 cute monsterbeside 1 creepy monster. Save as PNG: 72ppi, width 1,000 pixels. IMPORTANT: Use any inspiration you want, but never submit traced work. We want only original designs, drawn freehand. You can use pen and paper or Photoshop or another program. Grade is for quantity, not quality. Get it all done, and submit to Piazza hw1 by noon Thursday!

43. Comfort Talk: Project Content Parameters • What are we comfortable seeing in projects for critique? • Consider: violence, historical personages of hatred, and levels of nudity. What are the comfort limits of our class community?

44. Post-Class Viewing: Samurai Jack Ep2 How do these monsters function in the context of the shots and story? How do they operate visually to contrast with the hero?