Animation Fundamentals - Project 1A: Character Design

Appeal: the visual charm of a character or scene design. It draws the viewer’s attention and makes characters engaging and memorable. Achieved through clear design, strong posing, and personality.
Solid Drawing: the illusion of three-dimensionality in characters and objects. It involves understanding volume, weight, balance, and anatomy. Good solid drawings prevents flatness and keeps forms believable, even in stylized animation.

Week 6

This week's class was held online as per management's instructions because of the road closures of caused by the ASEAN Summit 2025. We learned about the animation principle of Staging.

Fig 2.2 Good example of staging a character onto a scene. (Source)

Staging is the clear presentation of an idea, action, or mood. It directs the viewer’s attention to the most important part of the scene. Achieved through composition, lighting, camera angle, and character placement. Good staging ensures the story point is instantly understood, even without dialogue.

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3. PROCESS

Task: Create a character by defining their age, gender, weight, attitude, and personality—this can be inspired by characters from your Film Studies or Cinematography class. Use references from movies, anime, or comics, ensuring your character has at least two legs for walk cycle practice in Project 2. Focus on design elements like shape language, proportion, silhouette, line of action, and colour to visually express the character’s personality and appeal to your audience.

3.1 Design Sketches and Description

I started with sketching out different character ideas to get a vibe of what I would enjoy both character-wise and animating-wise (in Project 2).

Humanoid Characters

Fig 3.1.1 Humanoid Character design sketches.

I started by drawing humanoid characters first (Fig 3.1.1). The following will be my inspirations for the 4 sketches:

Sketch #1 (most left of Fig 3.1.1): this was mostly just a warm-up sketch for me to get a feel of adjusting proportions of a character which in this case is the puffer jacket.

Sketch #2 (middle left of Fig 3.1.1):

Personality - An old Original Character of mine back in 2022
Design - Glim from Mune: Guardian of the Mune

Fig 3.1.2 Sketch #2 Inspos.

Sketch #3 (middle right of Fig 3.1.1):

Personality - Gregory House from House MD
Build - Gregory Hautecourt from The Aristocats
Other - Viktor from Arcane

Fig 3.1.3 Sketch #3 Inspos.

Sketch #4 (most right of Fig 3.1.1):

Fashion - Carmen Sandiego, Miranda Priestly from Devil Wears Prada book cover
Design - Another old Original Character of mine back in 2023
Shapes - The Beldam from Coraline
Occupation - Daredevil from Marvel Comics

Fig 3.1.4 Sketch #4 Inspos.

Non-human Characters

Fig 3.1.5 Non-human Character design sketches.

Sketch #5 (top left of Fig 3.1.5):

Concept & Personality - Jenny Wakeman (XJ-9) from My Life as a Teenage Robot
Design - Hatsune Miku, Ena from Dream BBQ

Fig 3.1.6 Sketch #5 Inspos.

Sketch #6 (bottom left of Fig 3.1.5):

Personality - Jeff the Land Shark from Marvel
Shape - Sharko from Zigg and Sharko

Fig 3.1.7 Sketch #6 Inspos.

Sketch #7 (bottom right of Fig 3.1.5) - these are just general inspirations as I didn't really give much thought into it's personality I just though it was cool-looking:

Fig 3.1.8 Sketch #8 Inspos.

Sketch #8 (top right of Fig 3.1.5):

Design - Decidueye from Pokèmon
Personality - Mimikyu from Pokèmon
Other - Huntress Wizard from Adventure Time, Wirt from Over the Garden Wall

Fig 3.1.9 Sketch #9 Inspos.

~~~

After contemplating for a while between Sketch #4 and Sketch #8, I decided to further develop Sketch #4. To get a feel of her character, I also made a few notes:

Name: Mira Ameena

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Weight: 55.3kg

Attitude/Personality: Rebellious, Stubborn, Competitive, Confident, Compassionate, Introverted

Description: As sly spy, Mira is one of her country's best of the best in criminal justice.; that is, if you count quietly taking down criminals in the dead of night as justice. Though blind from birth, Mira's continuous competitive spirit constantly pushes her to become better than even her visually-abled friends. She pursued fencing and martial arts and has since slowly risen up to the ranks in who criminals fear to approach her.

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3.2 Reference & Turnaround Sheet

Reference Sheet

Fig 3.2.1 Brush used for line art.

I mainly used Procreate for this part and the future Sheets. For the Brush, I used Procreate's default Technical Pen with some stabilisation settings on. Additionally, to keep things consistent for the front, I used the Symmetry tool and adjusted here and there for the character design.

I also added a few changes to the Mira's design by adding sharper shapes within the silhoutte of the character.

Fig 3.2.2 Black and white coloring.

Next, I started on flat colours but I started the coloring in black and white so that I knew the contrast of the colours before figuring out the actual hues.

Fig 3.2.3 Coloring.

I decided to go with blues and yellow accents for Mira's colours to exude confidence, intellect and authority.

Additionally, the fact that she often fights at night, the bright blues and yellows act as a disadvantage but to Mira, her skills outweigh the need of the practicality of colours in her uniform. Her confidence in herself lets her express her own sense of fashion.

Fig 3.2.4 Rendering and additional "no accessories" version.

For rendering, I used a simple two different levels of shadow and subtle highlights. Then I made a copy of the entire character with the render and removes accessories like Mira's glasses and hat.

Fig 3.2.5 Small detailed rendering.

Fig 3.2.6 Simplified shape language.

Turnaround Sheet

Fig 3.2.7 Making important guidelines.

I made guidelines using the drawing guide on Procreate and made sure they line up throughout the canvas so it'd be easier for me to use for the drawings further right of the canvas.

Fig 3.2.8 Side, back and 3/4ths back view.

Compared to the first 3/4ths, the rest of the angles and the additional 3/4ths back view was a bit of a challenge for me to draw. I followed a tip I keep in my head which was : "For the back version of a character, use the front version and erase the lines inside but keep the outlines. From there you can use the guidelines to see where parts would end up in the back view.". Of which I used the same logic for the extra 3/4ths back view.

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3.3 Pose Sheet

Fig 3.3.1 Pose Sketches.

I started by sketching digitally with the line art pen (orange) but it felt really stiff for me to work with so I sketched the other poses with a pen called "Flat Square" which I am very comfortable sketching with. Pose -wise, I at first went with Bored, Curious and Frustrated. But after a bit of consideration, I replaced Curious with Fighting. I then also added Drunk and Relaxed into the pose choices.

Fig 3.3.2 First post line art.

Fig 3.3.3 - 3.3.5 Progress from line art to final render.

The rendering process from line art to final render is the same as done before.

Fig 3.3.4 Pose Sheet Layers Screenshot.

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3.4 Expression Sheet

Fig 3.4.1 Notebook Pose Sketches.

I felt more comfortable sketching on paper than digital this time so I drew up rough sketches that caught a vibe of Mira's personality. If you saw in the previous poses, I played around with Mira's glasses to act as expressive as her eyes would be. This was a decision I made because I wanted to creatively play around with the glasses and act as Mira's second pair of bigger and expressive eyes :D

Fig 3.4.2 Digitised Pose Sketches.

Learning from my hardships in my Pose Sheet sketching, I started the digitised sketched with a brush I was more familiar with in sketching. The 5 emotions I chose were: Confused, Tired, Furious, Suspicious and Surprised.

Fig 3.4.3 - 3.4.5 Progress from line art to final render.

I did the same line art techniques and

However, I looked back on the brief and realised I needed to make emotions related to Happy, Sad, Angry, Fear and Surprise so that was my own mistake. To fix that I decided to tweak Confused, Tired, and Suspicious. To see the final version of the Expression Sheet, you can go to FINAL section of this blog post.

Fig 3.4.4 Expression Sheet Layers Screenshot.

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4. FINAL

Fig 4.1 Final Character Reference Sheet.

Name: Mira Ameena

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Weight: 55.3kg

Attitude/Personality: Rebellious, Stubborn, Competitive, Confident, Compassionate, Introverted

Fig 4.2 Character Turnaround Sheet.

Fig 4.3 Character Pose Sheet.

Fig 4.4 Character Expression Sheet.

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5. REFLECTION

Overall, this assignment made a fun impression on me. I had fun sketching up different character designs since I managed to implement my interests (like House MD) into it and that made the whole process more interesting. I also love drawing characters in general so this whole experience was a whole plus. However, I rarely draw full body designs for characters so it was a bit of a challenge for me and I will say it isn.t as perfect as I'd like it to be but I'm just glad I managed to pump out so many full-body drawings since it usually takes me months to find the motivation to create. All in all, I loved drawing Mira and her attitude and will definitely look forward to drawing her more in the future!!

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🌊

Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly (0354180)

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Animation Fundamentals - Project 1A: Character Design

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