Workshops

Artist insight

EFFECTIVE
CHARACTER DESIGN
Character design involves many different skills, from analysis and problem
solving, to anatomy and colour. Francis Tsai shares his design tips
uccessfully designing a
character means utilising
and combining a whole
range of skills, as well as
having some basic knowledge.
Put another way, a successful design
comes out of a process that is one half
design and the other half visual
communication. The design aspect
relies heavily on analysing a situation,
formulating a design problem, and then

Francis Tsai
COUNTRY: US
CLIENTS: Playboy,
Mattel, Motion Theory,
Privateer Press
Francis works
as a
conceptual
designer and
illustrator in
the entertainment
industry. He studied
physical chemistry and
architecture and worked
in the latter for several
years before leaving to
pursue his current career,
in TV, comics and film.
www.teamgt.com

2 PATTERN
RECOGNITION

Human beings are very

good at pattern recognition.
This is a trait that designers
should take advantage of,
and its also the basis for
designing with a silhouette
in mind. Related to this is
the idea of teams its
sometimes helpful to define
groups based on colour,
shape, or line. Associating
certain groups with certain
shapes or silhouettes helps
the viewer to quickly
determine if character X is
part of the Evil Empire or
one of the Good Guys.

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devising an interesting and elegant

solution. The visual communication
component depends heavily on basic
skills of anatomy, composition, colour
theory, and the ability to communicate
the ideas that come out of the design
process. With that strategy in mind,
Ill work through some examples
showing different ways in which ideas
are communicated in different
character design case studies.

1 INITIAL THUMBNAIL SKETCHES

This is usually the first step towards a

character design. The main goal with this
step is simply to generate as many ideas
as possible, without worrying about
editing anything out. There will be some
interesting ideas, and most likely some
unusable ideas. Thats okay. Almost
everything from this stage onwards
involves paring down and editing, so for
now its good to push the boundaries and
get as much out on the table as possible.

3 SILHOUETTE
EXPLORATION
One of the primary ways in which we
recognise a character is through its
silhouette. This is the main graphic
read of a character, over and above
details, textures and to a certain extent
even colour. From a distance, textures
and details are obscured, and lighting
conditions can affect how the
characters colour is perceived. Rarely
will a characters silhouette be altered
by environmental conditions.

4 THE ITERATIVE PROCESS

Once weve had the chance to
generate a lot of thumbnail sketches,
we have many ideas available to sort
through. This is the point in the process
where we start refining, combining
different elements and keeping the
ideas that work and discarding the
ones that are not clear or dont work.

5 SHARED
VOCABULARY:
OVERT REFERENCES

Sometimes its useful to rely

on visual cues and ideas with
which people are already
familiar and have certain
associations. One example
Ive provided here shows a
super-cyborg soldier type
with a design that borrows
equally from Nazi and
bondage visual cues.
This was intended to
create a fearful and
disturbing aura,
and relies on
ideas people
already have
regarding
certain kinds
of imagery.

Artist insight Effective character design

Borrowing from real-world
cultures and religions for iconic
imagery has the benefit of using
shared vocabulary, but this
usage shouldnt be arbitrary

10 PERSONALITY
THROUGH POSE
OR ACTION
This one is a technique that is probably
better used once the basic character
design is mostly completed. Showing
a character in some sort of characterspecific action is part of the visual
communication tool set that tells the
viewer a little more about the character.

6 SHARED VOCABULARY:
SUBTLE REFERENCES
In the previous example the borrowed
visual cues were obvious, and very
specific. Its also possible to hint at,
rather than loudly state your
references. In this sketch Im
referencing religious, priest-like figures
by using cues, such as long robes,
sacred writings and ceremonial garb
but Im not directly referring to any
particular religious figure.

7 ALTERED PROPORTIONS
With human and human-based
characters in particular, altering the
proportions of the body is another
useful tool in communicating a
character concept. Creating a
character with a large head and
small body evokes a different
emotional response than a character
with a small head and large body.

9 SCALE

An issue thats related to the area of body

proportions is scale. A piece of concept art
showing a lone character (unless its obviously
a human character) is often not effective in
communicating that characters size relative to
something the viewer is familiar with. Its usually
helpful to add a human figure for scale.
11 CULTURE SALAD
The term actually refers to something
you should avoid doing. Borrowing
from real-world cultures and religions
for iconic imagery has some of the
benefits of using shared vocabulary as
described above, but this kind of usage
shouldnt be arbitrary. If cultural
references are used in an appropriate
manner, and combined with other
influences that they are not normally
associated with, the results can be
interesting and unique.

12 THE TWIST
8 SHOW PERSONALITY
THROUGH EXPRESSION
Another aspect of character design
thats often story-based is the
characters personality. One way to
show some sense of that is to portray
your character with some sort of facial
expression that reveals an important
aspect of that characters personality.
Its not usually a critical design element,
but it does contribute to the visual
communication part of the job.

Putting a twist on a familiar

character or idea is another
way to generate interesting
character designs.
Depending on how strongly
the original idea shows
through, its not quite as
useful a technique for
character designs that are
very specific; however, it can
be a useful exercise at times
to explore visual cues you
might not otherwise use.

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13 PROPS: WEAPONS
Certain characters derive much of
their identity from the equipment
they carry for example, many scifi characters are identified by their
weapons and armour. If a weapon
is unusual or prominent enough, it
forms a significant aspect of the
silhouette. Stylised, oversized guns
and swords are the most typical
examples, but with a bit of thought
and research, this strategy can yield
some interesting design statements.

If a weapon is
prominent or odd
enough, it forms a
significant aspect
of the characters
silhouette
14 UNIFYING DESIGN ELEMENTS
Relating one or more characters as part of a team can also occur at a second read
level, where secondary details such as graphics, logos, costume colour treatments,
and so on can indicate to the viewer that two or more characters are related.

16 ATTENTION, VISUAL
COMMUNICATION

Once your design is more or less finalised,

there are many visual communication
techniques available to help you
communicate the important aspects of it.
For instance, using lighting to focus a viewers
attention on the key elements such as
logos, facial tattoos, costume graphics and
so on and enabling less important areas
of a character design to fall into shadow
reinforces the important parts of the design.

17 KEY GRAPHIC
OR COLOUR

19 FOCUS ATTENTION,
BE DETAIL ORIENTED

One way to create a strong identity for

a character design is to focus attention
on one key graphic or colour element.
Many classic comic book superhero
designs rely on this strategy a simple,
clear logo on the chest, which often
serves as a design motif for their
equipment as well.

Too much detail can kill your design;

its a common mistake to equate lots
of detail with lots of interest. Similar
to the way in which the comic book
heroes mentioned above benefit from
a single, memorable logo, details in a
character design should be used with
restraint. The more areas of high detail
you include, the less memorable each
detail becomes.

18 USING COLOUR
AND PATTERN
15 OTHER PROPS

Weapons are just one possibility, of course;

you can provide insight into a character and
create an interesting design statement by
showing him or her with a particular vehicle,
animal companion, or mystical equipment.
These items communicate an aspect of the
character by providing information such as
what the character does, and how they do it.

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In addition to literal logos

and symbols, colour and
pattern can be used in a
more abstract manner to
subtly imply particular
ideas or motifs. Using
complementary or
contrasting colours for skin
and costume can provide
an opportunity to create
graphic shapes that can
become a unique identifier.

20 SYMMETRY
Human standards of beauty usually
depend on faces and bodies exhibiting
left-right symmetry. This is a useful
note to remember, even if in real life
people rarely exhibit perfect
symmetry. In the field of entertainment
design, we are portraying ideals and
extremes. Part of the task of visual
communication is emphasising the
message you want to communicate,
and playing down what you dont.

Artist insight Effective character design

21 ASYMMETRY
If, on the other hand, you are including
asymmetry as part of your design
statement, its better to be definite
about it. The main thing to remember
here is that making something very
subtly asymmetrical just looks like
you made a mistake; if youre going
for an asymmetrical design element,
make it obvious. This is again a visual
communication matter your message
has to be clear to be effective.

A sexy twist on
something thats
not traditionally
considered sexy is
interesting the sexy
nurse archetype is a
great example of this

22 SEX SELLS

This is an advertising adage

that has been proven time
and time again
again. However, I
dont think sexy can be the
main concept for a character
design, at least not for one
that needs to have any sort
of staying power. A sexy
twist on something thats
not traditionally considered
sexy is more interesting the
sexy nurse archetype is a
great example of this idea.

23 THE SUBTLE,
CREEPY TWIST
A phenomenon thats been discussed
a lot lately in the games industry, called
The Uncanny Valley, refers to the
creepy effect that an almost
completely human-looking character
has on a viewer. Because the character
is so convincing except for one or two
little things, the viewer perceives
something wrong about the character.
This is usually considered to
be negative, but this effect
can also be used
intentionally to create a
subtly creepy character.

24 THE
TURNAROUND
Normally a character
designer is also required to
provide a turnaround, or
orthographic drawings of the
character that show front, side
and back views. The process of
making sure details line up across
all the drawings will often reveal
problems in the design. On
paper, its difficult to anticipate
every design issue, so doing the
turnarounds is a good way to be
rigorous about your design
working in three dimensions.

25 THE ACTION SHOT: BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

One very effective way of communicating a character design is by creating

a more narrative style of illustration. Obviously, this kind of image should be
created once the character design has been fairly well developed. By showing
the character engaged in some major conflict or story point, we are getting
more information than we would from a simple character design sketch.

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