Tutorial Dump

Writing Fiend Adventures

Writing Mummy Adventures

Writing Ghost Stories

Gesture Drawing

Lesson 1 - Line of Action

The line of action is the foundation upon which you will build the rest of your drawing. It is analogous to the main idea or thesis in an essay paper. There is always a point to a well-written paper, and the same is true of a well-drawn drawing. For your first assignment, you will be distilling poses down to their bare essence - a single line of action.

Lesson 2 - Shape

Shape will help you determine the overall feel and dynamics of your drawing. It is another form of distillation, and the next step from your line of action. Your assignment this week will be to abstract poses into shapes.

Lesson 3 - Silhouette

Creating a strong silhouette will enhance your drawing's "readability". A strong drawing should be "readable" even when it is completely blacked out. This week, you will be drawing with the intention of creating strong silhouettes.

Lesson 4 - Space

Using space will help give your drawings depth, and make them feel grounded in a physical reality. Spatial depth will add dimension to your work and help pull your viewer into your drawing. For this assignment, you will focus on creating depth and space in your gesture drawings.

Lesson 5 - Exaggeration

Using exaggeration in drawings is analogous to using hyperbole in a rhetorical debate: you're pushing extreme examples in order to effectively communicate your ideas. In gesture drawing, we should aim for communicative accuracy over anatomical accuracy. For this week's assignment, you will focus on pushing and pulling aspects of the pose in order to effectively communicate your ideas.

Lesson 6 - Extrapolation

Extrapolation is the process by which you "read between the lines" and see beyond what is there. Through successful extrapolation, you will SEE a pose of limbs, muscle and bone, but FEEL an idea, emotion, or action. For your assignment, you will extract ideas you see in the pose, and instill them onto unrelated characters and objects.

Lesson 7 - Story

Story is the most important element in all of gesture drawing. All of the earlier topics we covered are meaningless unless they are used in the service of a greater good - telling a story. Your assignment this week will focus on drawing the pose in the context of a story.

Lesson 8 - Final Review

I will review the course topics, talk about how they fit into the final communication of your story, and offer you my final thoughts on gesture drawing and its importance on growing as an artist.

Characters for Animated Film

Lesson 1 - Shape Language

In my first lecture, we will talk about shape language and how it applies to character design. We will examine the silhouettes of iconic cartoon characters and talk about why they read well. We will further discuss the use of shapes in various cultures throughout history, and how shapes affect character.

Lesson 2 - What is Character?

In this class, we will tackle the quintessential question: what is "character"? We will look at the works of more great designers to try to find the answer. This is a class for character design for film and storytelling, not television or illustration; we will talk about what the differences are, look at examples of designs with and without "character", and discuss more about the importance of finding good reference before you even begin to design your characters.

Lesson 3 - Gesture and Mood

In telling an effective story, we need to understand lines of action and how to use them. We will break down shapes and talk about what to look for when drawing from life. I will help you create a clear silhouette and stage your characters so that their moods and gestures read clearly and easily.

Lesson 4 - Exaggeration

Exaggeration is a vital component to character design, but it must not be done at random. In this lesson, we'll examine intelligent and tasteful exaggeration -- how to identify the key defining features of a character and push them. We will also cover the importance of good drawing and staging.

Lesson 5 - Moments

In "Breaking Bad", when Jesse and Mr. White cook together for the first, these respective characters have cinematic moments that add "true" character to their designs. In this lecture, we will discuss how dynamic story moments (body language, acting, staging, emotion, attitude) add "true" character to character designs.

Lesson 6 - Expressions

Good expressive emotion means conveying clearly to your audience what your character is thinking or feeling through their expressions. In this lesson, I will do an expression drawing demo and talk again about the effective use of reference, including using a rough sculpt to help us draw expressions from multiple angles.

Lesson 7 - Caricature

The best caricature artists can often draw a person with a better likeness than taking a photo because they can take character into account. In this lecture, we will talk about how caricature applies to character design, look at examples from great caricature artists, and do a caricature demo.

Lesson 8 - Finishing Touches

Finishing touches are our last opportunity to eliminate generic qualities from our character designs. I will demonstrate how to use texture and value to simplify shapes and enhance visual interest in a character.

Lesson 9 - No Fear!

In my final lecture, I will do demos of characters successfully finished to a clean up. We will talk about overarching issues for character designers: the many ways in which we can finish a design, how to avoid getting stale or bored, how to avoid insecurity and lethargy in your designs, and more.

Expressive Characters

Lesson 1 - Proportions

In lesson one, you'll learn to apply one of the core fundamentals of character design, exaggeration. Exaggeration can be an incredibly useful element in your designs, and helps to communicate what your character is feeling, doing, or help describe their personality. You will gather your own photo reference, define your concept, emphasize the idea, and try to bring to life the idea you want to communicate through exaggeration.

Lesson 2 - Dimensionality

In your second week, you'll work on incorporating the illusion of dimensionality to your characters by using techniques such as perspective, foreshortening, overlap, and much more. 2D shapes often lay the groundwork for any expressive character design, and there are several ways to make your drawings appear more three dimensional, without losing what the initial shape exploration gave you.

Lesson 3 - Angles and Arrow-dynamics

As well as feeling and personality, exaggerating the character's force and movement is very important. In week three you'll learn about the line of action, lines and angle relationships, and arrow dynamics through observing, emphasizing, and again exaggerating the pose.

Lesson 4 - Weight

Giving your designs the feeling of weight and further exaggerating it gives a certain believability to your them. In lesson four you'll learn techniques in which to infuse more weight into your character's poses to create that realistic feeling.

Lesson 5 - Hair and Clothing

Hair and clothing are great ways to let your audience know when and where your characters are from, and help to describe personality and feeling. This lesson goes over creating gesture and form, considering the volume of the body, applying force and gravity to hair and clothing, as well as how different types of materials are affected.

Lesson 6 - Facial Expressions

Maintaining consistency with your characters is crucial, and learning to create a variety of facial expressions that fit into the realm of your character is a big part of this consistency. You'll learn about the volumes of the face, squash and stretch, arrow dynamics as it applies to the face, expressions, and treating the head and jaw and two separate parts.

Lesson 7 - Caricature

In week seven you'll start applying the techniques of caricature to your character designs. You'll start by gathering photo reference, finding the characteristics of the face that stand out, simplifying a few visual elements that best describe the face, exaggerating, and applying those properties to your own character design.

Lesson 8 - Acting

Exaggeration can also be applied to your character's acting in order to bring them to life on the page. To do this, you'll be finding reference of actor's to study body language and how they move and appropriate that knowledge so your character appears to act. This lesson goes over becoming your character, finding the pose, creating thumbnails, how to come up with ideas, and more.

Lesson 9 - Character Relationships

Twitter: shuppie_

had to design characters from the original star wars trilogy as if it was set in 1980s new york...

Twitter: GhostlyGhosti

I have to make an object character for one of my classes aka make a brave little toaster oc

Twitter: pepperpencil

second character design assignment of the semester! protagonist, comic relief, and antagonist!!!

Twitter: pkaykim

Character assignment to do a design based on a song

Twitter: elekilokal

We're doing an assignment rn where we have to design a character in the style of our favorite artist

Twitter: tornatics

character design assignment for one of my classes where we had to mash an object with an animal

Twitter: themsjolly

A fun assignment were I had to design a new character on a current cartoon show.

Twitter: alexa_doodles

We had to design  a super villain for The Incredibles. I was trying to emulate the retro geometric style they used.

Twitter: julie__kwon

class assignment where we had to design characters of a cell, an antibody, a vaccine, germs, and a phagocyte

Twitter: Flannelson

Assignments I’ve found online:

From Cedric’s Blog-O-Rama

Lesson 1: Fat Joe

You are to design a concept sketch of Fat Joe based on the play, The Long Voyage Home. Take it as far as you like. Description: SCENE—The bar of a low dive on the London water front—a squalid, dingy room dimly lighted by kerosene lamps placed in brackets on the walls At the far end of the bar stands Fat Joe, the proprietor, a gross bulk of a man with an enormous stomach. His face is red and bloated, his little piggish eyes being almost concealed by rolls of fat. The thick fingers of his big hands are loaded with cheap rings and a gold watch chain of cable-like proportions stretches across his checked waistcoat.

Lesson 2: Silhouettes

Our assignment was to take Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and fill a page with little thumbnail silhouettes. We were told to play with shapes, trying to find a simple and clear design for the character. The good thing about doing fast little thumbnails is it forces you to think in broad, general terms and not get hung up on the details. When you are just concerned with the overall shape, your thought process can flow and brainstorm. The goal isn’t to do terrific sketches, its to get a lot of ideas onto the paper so that later you can develop the best ones. It’s a great exercise and I highly recommend it. In the future I hope to make it part of my process when designing characters for clients projects.

Lesson 3: Portrait Study

We were given photos of four different men. First, we had to do a straight-forward sketch of the person, not really pushing the shapes or getting too cartoony. Just do a standard portrait. Then, after finishing the portrait sketch, immediately put it away and get rid of the photo. From memory, draw the person again using three different shapes: a circle, a square, and a triangle.

The goal was not to do a dead-on likeness and squeeze it into the shape, because that would be almost impossible. Rather, we were to take the features that defined that person (i.e. eyes wide apart, big chin, small pointy nose, whatever) and play with those features within the shapes to create three new characters.

Lesson 4: Jekyll and Hyde

Last week we were told to choose one of two stories (Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, or Oliver Twist), and start thinking about designs for the main characters. Our first step was to fill up at least one page with thumbnail silhouettes of possible designs, thinking about what we could say about the character with just the overall shape. Stephen then critiqued our thumbnails and told us which ones were the strongest. As the course progresses, we will continue to develop our character(s).

Lesson 5: Hand-y Drawing Exercise

Part 1 was to sketch a page of hands.

Next to the face, the hands are the most expressive part of the body, and therefore one of the most important features in any drawing. Its easy to get lazy with the hands, because they can be so stinkin’ hard to draw. I think there are two reasons so many artists struggle:

1. Hands are incredibly complex. I think there’s something like 27 bones in the hand and 15 joints, not to mention all the little muscles, tendons, etc.

2. Hands are always moving, and they can move a zillion different ways. There is no “standard” hand pose.

Stephen spent a significant portion of his video lecture analyzing the hand and pointing out how to break it down into manageable parts to make it easier to draw. Then he told us to go draw a page of hands, using either our own hands or photos for reference.

Lesson 6: Jekyll and Hyde Clean-Up

Our assignment was to choose one design from our “Jeckyll and Hyde” work and ink it up. Inking is not my strong point, especially digital inking on the Cintiq. The Cintiq is superbly fabulous and awesome….except when it comes to inking. I just can’t seem to get the same line quality that I could on paper, which makes my lines look even more mediocre than they normally would be. Maybe I just need to practice it more.

As part of the class, Stephen gives each student one-on-one feedback on their assignments via internet video. Here’s some pointers he’s given me on my assignments, which I tried to incorporate into this final design:

• Watch out for “parallels” (lines and/or shapes in the design that run parallel to each other).

• Push your shapes more. Use more extreme angles, greater size contrasts, broader curves, etc.

• Work on thinking through the understructure of the drawing (especially in your legs and hands). Don’t just use blobby shapes, make sure there is a real skeleton with real muscles underneath.

• Keep your sizes/proportions consistent (i.e. both hands the same size, both arms the same length, etc.)

• Let your design “breathe”. Pull your arms and legs out and away from the body for clearer poses. Spread out your facial features more (I tend to bunch them up a bit).

Lesson 7: Turnarounds

This week’s assignment was to do rough turnarounds of our character.

In animation, once a character design is approved the next step is to create “turnaround” drawings. The purpose is to make sure the storybaord artists, animators, and/or computer modellers can re-create the character accurately. Turnarounds are a tedious but essential part of any character designer’s job. For major characters, there are generally four to five drawings that need to be done: Front View, 3/4 Front View, Side View, 3/4 Back View, and/or Back View. For minor characters, usually only a Front 3/4 View and a Back 3/4 View are needed.

Turnarounds can be quite challenging. It’s relatively easy to do just one drawing of a character. But drawing the same character from other angles can complicate things. The most common difficulty for the artist is making sure that the character looks appealing and consistent from all angles. Easier said than done.

Turnarounds will also reveal any flaws or weakneses in the design. You may sketch a character that looks great from the side view, but draw him again from the front view and he may suddenly flatten out and get boring.

A good designer must also think about functionality. In animation a character can have crazy proportions, but he/she must still be able to act expressively and perform common tasks. For example, did you know Charlie Brown can only touch his nose if you look at him from the front? If you look at him from the side, his arms are too short to reach around his big head.

The best way to do turnarounds is to start with a 3/4 view and then spin him around in your mind to get the other views.

Lesson 8: Attitudes and Expressions

This week’s lesson was all about model sheets, specifically attitudes and expressions.

A “model sheet” is a page of drawings that animators and storyboard artists will use as a guide when animating a character. A good model sheet will give a sense of both the personality of the character (i.e. how does he react to certain situations?) and the physicality of the character (i.e. how does he walk, move, etc.).

Our assignment was to create a model sheet for our character, consisting of two parts:

1. Six standard expressions (anger, surprise, sadness, happiness, fear, and disgust);

2. Two full-body attitude drawings, which could be whatever we wanted. The only rule was that they give a sense of the character’s personality and/or response to a given situation. I chose to depict Dr. Jeckyll before and after drinking the potion that transforms him into a big, ugly, hulking monster.

Lesson 9: The Importance of Sketchbooks

We had to go to a busy public place and fill a page with observational sketches. The Mall of America is near my house, so I went there to sketch the above page.

I can’t over-emphasize the importance of keeping a daily sketchbook. The only way to get better at drawing is to draw. As Stephen likes to say, “A page a day keeps the competition away”.

A sketchbook isn’t for polished drawings. Rather, it’s a private place where you can stay loose, experiment, stretch yourself, and make mistakes. Lots of them! (Mistakes are the best teachers). If you want to keep growing as an artist, the worst thing you can do is fill your sketchbook with things you already know how to draw.

Going to a busy place to draw real live people is something you should do regularly. (Stephen fills a page every day over his lunch hour). Most people don’t sit still for very long, so it forces you to stay loose, think fast and make bold decisions, which over time will increase your confidence. Don’t sweat the details; focus on the essence of a pose (which can usually be captured in just a few lines). Try to capture the overall physical attitude of the person, which is the foundation that breathes life into a drawing. You can always go back and flesh out the details later.

In his lecture, Stephen talked about what a character designer should focus on as he sketches the people around him (i.e. balance, gesture, line of action, negative space, rhythm, attitude, etc.) He also talked about not just seeing, but studying what you draw. Observe the different ways people walk, talk, and gesture. Notice body types, hairstyles, and clothing choices. Study how fabric clings and hangs around the body, how people position their legs when they sit, how they lean when they carry things, how their posture changes with their attitude (i.e. excited, bored, annoyed, etc.) These are the things that give your drawings personality and character.

Stephen also talked about “frankensteining”, that is, assembling parts of several people into one character. You might start to draw a man reading the paper, but as soon as you rough in his body pose he gets up to leave. Don’t abandon your drawing. Add the profile from another person, maybe the hair from a third person, etc. Frankensteining keeps you from getting frustrted when your models keep moving (or leaving) in mid-drawing, and you might be pleasantly surprised at the new character you’ve created.

The point is that you keep drawing, keep experimenting, keep learning.

Lesson 10: Memory Sketching

“Memory sketching” is an exercise designed to strengthen your observation muscles. It works like this:

Go to a place where there are a lot of people (i.e. a mall, airport, coffee shop, etc.). Choose someone in the crowd to draw. Before you pick up your pencil, spend a few moments studying everything about them (their clothing, their posture, their face, the way they do their hair, their height….everything). Don’t look at them for longer than one or two minutes. If they haven’t walked away by then, turn and face the other direction.

Now, close your eyes and continue to study them in your mind. Analyze as much as you can remember. What was that hairstyle again? How far apart were the eyes? What color were the shoes? What was with that funny walk? (Don’t peek. It will completely destroy the purpose of the exercise.)

Finally, when you’ve got your target burned into your brain and you’ve thought everything through, THEN pick up your pencil to draw. And again, no peeking.

Lesson 11: Fat Joe

Our very first assignment was to design a character based on Fat Joe from the play The Long Voyage Home. We were given this description:

SCENE—The bar of a low dive on the London water front—a squalid, dingy room dimly lighted by kerosene lamps placed in brackets on the walls At the far end of the bar stands Fat Joe, the proprietor, a gross bulk of a man with an enormous stomach. His face is red and bloated, his little piggish eyes being almost concealed by rolls of fat. The thick fingers of his big hands are loaded with cheap rings and a gold watch chain of cable-like proportions stretches across his checked waistcoat.

PART 1: SETTING UP

There are many different set-ups possible for your pitch. Figure out what works for you:

Having notes with you can help with jitters. There are several elegant ways to carry notes with you:

Pick your outfit

There are some basic do’s and don’ts for your outfit:

Create a rough index

There are some essential elements for a pitch. Here’s a basic index to work from:

Use little to no text on your slides

Don’t put much (or any) text on the slides. The audience can not properly listen and read simultaneously.

Use little to no lists/bullet points either

Using lists/bullet points often takes the soul/rhythm out of your pitch. Don’t use them to cram a story into something static.

Use lists/bullet points only to sum up things where appropriate, such as a few episode loglines, a budget, or a character’s personality traits – in other words, things that naturally lend themselves to being lists.

Design your slides (nicely)

The graphic design of your slides should be on point (or at least not horrible). There’s no excuses! We’re in a visual industry after all.

PART 2: BEING CLEAR

Keep it brief

Make your pitch as compact as possible. If you try to communicate too much at once, you’ll end up communicating nothing at all.

Stick to the program

When you have a lot to say about your project, pitching can easily become messy. Make sure that you stick to the program and are not all over the place.

If you pitch with several people, think about ways to divide the talking, like bouncing between each chapter.

Use your slides to communicate

Make your slides support what you say. Thoughtful design choices can help the audience absorb information more easily.

Explain if something is temp

Mention it when something you show is not indicative of the final product, like the visual style. Then explain what it is going to be like.

Make your designs fit your target group

Even if your visual materials are just temporary sketches, make sure they fit your target group.

Find the right tone

The tone of your pitch should correctly reflect the tone of your project.

If you’re pitching a dark/gloomy/serious project, then lead towards the happier/lovely/beautiful side of it. Otherwise it can scare off the audience, especially when you’re doing a project for kids.

Choose your words carefully

The way you describe your project sets expectations, so choose your words carefully. Be especially careful with generic, subjective words (‘funny’ for example). Rather, use very specific words.

Share the ending

Tell your audience how your story ends. Keeping the ending a secret is not cool – it’s just inconvenient.

Keep repeating the format

Keep mentioning the format, at every chance you get. People tend to forget easily.

PART 3: BUILDING TRUST

Pitch with your team

While creators often pitch solo at American studios, at European pitching events it’s common practice to pitch as a team. It helps you with jitters, and moreover it makes your project feel more robust.

When you pitch with several people, make sure all of you look interested while the other person talks.

Mention stamps of approval

Be sure to mention anything that shows other parties have already put trust in you or your project.

Flaunt your knowledge

Know what works for your market and target group, and flaunt that knowledge every chance you get.

Mention your why

Be sure to include a personal note in your pitch. It helps the audience understand why you want to make this project happen, and to be inspired by your enthusiasm.

Don’t say it; imply it

Instead of you saying how fun/beautiful/special your project is, you should give your audience reasons to think it. Your project’s fun/beauty/uniqueness should be obvious from the content in your pitch.

Choose your jokes wisely

Including jokes in your pitch is a great way to lighten the mood and make yourself memorable. Choose your jokes carefully though; if you’re not 100 percent sure you can pull off the right timing and tone of voice, then don’t include it. Be especially careful with cheeky jokes that could come across as simply sarcastic/mean/cocky.

Remember to breathe

Don’t be afraid to pause and breathe every once in a while. You’ll become more calm, and it actually makes you look thoughtful.

PART 4: EARNING BONUS POINTS

Give a taste of your project

The absolute best thing is for your audience to feel like they’re watching an episode or scene for a while. There are endless opportunities to achieve this feeling.

Test with your target audience

Do a test screening with your target audience, and share the reactions with your pitch audience. A quote from your niece is already a good start, but of course the bigger the test audience, the more convincing you’ll sound.

Mention cross-media potential

Cross-media opportunities are becoming increasingly important in the market. If your project has those opportunities, be sure to mention them. If you can’t name anything specific though, it’s better to not mention it at all.

Be remembered through a prop

Sporting a funny prop makes you easy to recognize. Don’t be afraid to get creative – just don’t overdo it to the point where they start confusing you for Carrot Top…

MISC

A quote from Mark Mayerson on the pitching process:

“Unfortunately, a pitch is a poor substitute for the finished product for a variety of reasons. The ability to pitch is a wholly separate skill from the creation of ideas. Extraverts have an advantage in pitching over introverts, but either type of person can have good ideas. Furthermore, there are so many variables between an idea and the finished product that a great idea can result in disappointment. Too much depends on the budget, the schedule, the crew, input from investors and chance. We are all familiar with movies that look like they will be great before they’re released but end up as failures.

There is another odd aspect to pitching. The person with the ideas doesn’t get paid to pitch, but the person without ideas gets paid to listen. Yet without people willing to pitch for free, the listener has no job. It’s sort of backwards.