Character Design: Week 1

This new Term marks the start of our character design lessons, a subject that I have been heavily invested in for a long time and have wanted to improve for a while now. 

Our first lesson focused on the idea of shapes and how different body shapes and styles can mean different things when it comes to characters.  For example a much rounder character design makes a character look cuter and friendlier then a character that is made up of larger, sharper shapes. Hello Kitty or the Power puff girls are good examples of this kind of character design. 

As you can see, the way these character are designed makes them more recognisable to regular people. Everyone know's who Hello kitty is thanks to the way the character is presented to us in everyday life. If she was designed differently, as a much larger, broader character, we might not have noticed the character as much. The same goes for the Power Puff girls. There design is incredibly simple yet, majorly distinguishable from other Cartoons during the same period.

We also learnt about how the shapes of character's can show their attitudes and personalities. One of the examples used was most Disney villains. All of them are made up of triangular shapes, sharp edges which show that they are supposed to be the evil character. 

The main task of this lesson however was for us to bring in a Character from a game, film or other source that we like or think is cool, then we had to change the style of the chosen character to influence the way he looks or is presented.

I chose the Lick King from the Warcraft games, as the character has one the most amazing stories in Video games that I've seen in a long time. This character is a large character made up of mostly rectangular and triangular shapes, showing his power, strength and the intentions that he has for the world. I decided to make this character smaller and rounder, in an attempt to make him look cuter, and more friendly, below is my attempt at changing the design of Arthas.