Tips on character design

Research

It can be helpful to try to figure out why certain characters and their characteristics work, but some of them are not working as those good ones. There is no shortcut or easy way to design a character. Stereotype sometimes works fine, but it might be boring too.

It is always good to look at reference from commercial TV or video game. From analysing existing character that the styles, background, or even appearance is close to your character, it might give you an idea that what kind of characteristic helps you to develop your character.

Aiming

What are your audience? And what kind of people will like your character? It is always helping to think your target audience first before you start a design. Is your character in a kid show? Or is it for a action show that mostly view by adult? Usually the characters for children show use brighter colour in their design. As to adult show, people would like to see complex details on their characters.

Accessories

Does your character fight? Or is your character rich? Accessories not only give out the personality but also background information for the character. Sometimes accessories have real function in the scene. For a time traveler, they might carry their time travel machine with them. It could be a watch. Whenever they travel across time, the camera could have a close shot on the watch.

A character who likes to sleep could hug a pillow all the time. That pillow becomes personality accessories. It definitely tells the audience something.

Character design

Character design

Good design

If it is good design, it just appeals people more, no matter if it is a cute or cool character. Sometime it is not necessary to be a character that is pleasure to look at. Monsters or allies could be very nasty as to appearance. However, you can still easily to judge if it is good design. Is the image plain? Or is it boring and flat? Good designs are always directing people’s eyes.

Silhouette

A good test of character design is to shade your design. Working on silhouette is a way to check the shapes, rhythms, and clarity. Good design should be working in silhouette. In other words, if silhouette looks good, then when you add on details, the design will be definitely good.

Contrast

Using contrasting shapes, lines, and colours is important. Variation creates interests to human eyes. With straight-line design, sometimes it is good to add a few curves.

Pushing it

Going beyond “Too much” might be getting you an interesting result. Especially in animation character design, “pushing” a bit more might get you a very decent result. It is good that you always try to go across the boundary and rules. There is no limitation.

Texture II projects

Low-poly game environment texture

This is the final project, texturing with low poly models for game environment. This is a scene without lighting.

( I do not own this model.)

Color set is based on light yellow and red. Every piece of texture has been modified in photoshop to fit the theme color and to create a feeling of unity.

The following is a capture of original models.

All the details are coming from textures. Some elements are repeating but with different angle or different rotation.

Shield Project ( with lighting )

This is project of learning how to use specular map and bump map.

( I do not own this model.)

PSD network in maya is quit useful here. It allows faster updating texture details onto models.

The wood has no specular while the paint on the shield is shinning. The dirt or rust also takes away the specular.

Character texturing

This is a character from old FA basketball game. Texture is provided in this practice.

I did not own any of the models or texture.

For the facial part, I use cylindrical mapping method. For the rest of body, I’ve used mixing both face projection and cylindrical mapping.

For each projects, it takes minimum 5 hours and maximum 16 hours to complete.

Seven elements of design

Line-Line of action by a person’s pose.

The pose is very strong though photographer’s camera.

The perspective creates an interesting feeling. Also, the city size in the background compared with the “human” is relatively small.

Lighting from the direction that the character is walking into creates an emotion.

Thinking with your right-side brain II

Using your right-side of brain to draw, to observe is essential. There are 5 perceptual skills.

• Perception of Edges – the “shared” edges of contour drawing ( where things starts and ends )

In drawing, edge is where two things come together to form a single boundary for both parts. Try to observe where the edges are in a picture, capture it, and draw it out.

• Perception of spaces – negative space and positive form

If there is main object in the scene, we will say it takes positive space. The area around it will be refered as negative space.

• Perception of relationship – perspective and proportion

We all know perspective is just there in the real world. We see proportion too, but be able to draw correct proportion is different story. People often drawing without being aware of proportion issue. With wrong proportion, everything will just seem to be wrong.

• Perception of lights and shadows – shading

Shadows and lights creates a feeling of distance, and real lighting. Shading can clarify edges. Also, it helps people to understand the relationship of  objects in a drawing.

• Perception of whole – the thinness of the thing

Everything has its own thinness.

There are several ways to practice these perception skills. You can draw with reference upside down, so you are not analyzing the object but focusing on those edges, spacing, shading, relationship and thinness. Try to read the picture but not thinking logically, create image while you watch it. Take time to observe things. Thinking with right-side of brain is not something people can do it naturally, it takes practice. Try to be aware of the surrounding world. You will finally get into it.

Thinking with your right-side brain I

Our project portfolio course has been talking about the “right-side of the brain concept” with us. As we know, normally people think logically and orally with words and ideas. Those thoughts are sentences or numbers which is functioning in our left-side of brains. However, illustration artists think differently. They see spaces, lines, and silhouettes and read information into their brains. All the vision information has relationships to one and another.

Everyone knows how to use pencil, but not everyone knows how to draw.  Artists are not born with all the drawing and painting skills. However, they are trained to do it.  It is the detailed observation and the “right-side of brain” make the difference. When we know the letters, we have learned pronunciation. We might not know what the word means, but we can read it out loud. With same thing applied to drawing, we might not know what the shape represent, but we can draw the shape. “Drawing” is basically presenting the world we can see by copying the vision on papers. When we learn how to write, we can use words to write articles and novels. When we learn how to draw, we can draw out our imaginary world. That is what artists do.

….TBC

Bump mapping, displacement mapping, and normal mapping

There are 3 kinds of computer graphic mapping we’ve been talked about in class. Some of them have been commonly use in texturing, and some are used for special occasion. Now here is my quick notes.

Bump mapping is commonly used for realistic texturing, which is based on changing of normals on the object surface. Since normals decide how the object surface react to light, bump mapping creates an illusion of 3D displacement on the object.

Displacement mapping makes changes on the real mesh’s displacement. Some problems occurs when trying to use displacement mapping are mesh position has been change but that is not visible in the working window. ( you have to render to see where is the real mesh is )

Normal mapping is used a RGB picture to store the displacement in X,Y, and Z axis to a surface normal. It is been used for rendering details on a low poly models.

In Maya, go to Lighting/Shading > Transfer Maps , we can bake displacement mapping or normal mapping onto a lower poly models.

Video for making baking map:

Example for bump mapping:

A choice of mapping methods is really depends on situation, and all the mapping has its own strength and weakness in certain situation.  Therefore, understanding of the theory and how it works are very critical.

Turtle meat soup

      There is a game called “turtle meat soup”. ( might be called in different ways ) I’ve been played it for hours this weekend. It is a puzzle game that can be played without any tools but a group people.

      How do you play this “turtle meat soup”? First, you need a host and few more players. The host will have a ending of story, and the story itself. The host will reveal only the ending part, and players have to guess what happened before. Here is an example.

 

The Ending

      Mark’s friend severed Mark a turtle meat soup. After he first taste of turtle meat, he started to cry, and killed himself.

      Players can bring up questions, but the host can only answer yes,no, or not relevant.

 

      Here are some examples of questions and answers:

Q: Was the soup poisoned?

A:No, it was not poisoned.

Q: Did the soup taste very bad?

A:No. ( it was a regular soup )

Q: Did Mark’s friend say anything after Mark drunk it?

A: Not relevant.

 

      The story plot will pop up as questions get into point. As a team work, players ask different questions and discuss clues with each others to reveal the story behind it. Every line in the ending has its own meaning, but you need bring up extra questions to get more clues from the host. In this case, players have to find out the reason why Mark was crying and why Mark killed himself. If you want to try the game with friends, remember only the host can read the complete story below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

————————————————————————————————————-

The story

      Mark, his wife, and Mark’s friend had a ship accident, and were stuck on island and short on food. Mark’s wife had very bad health condition, so she decided to kill herself to save Mark’s life. She ask Mark’s friend sever her meat to Mark as the “turtle meat soup”.

      From the ending, Mark had tasted the real turtle meat and figure out the taste was totally different, and he suddenly realized the previous turtle meat soup was not from turtle but his wife. Then, he started to cry, and killed himself afterward.

Texture I Project: Feat of strength

The original picture was over 4000*2000 pixels.

 

This image was from the final project of texture I. “Feat of strength” was the topic. Unbelievable strength was the essential idea which made this project more fun. I really enjoyed it.

 

Software:  Photoshop CS4

Here is how I approached it:

 

First of all, I put in the background with well-composting image which would balance out itself, but not in a boring way. Then, I started to add in elements in different layers. In order to make everything looks as one piece, color adjustment also got involved.

 

 

I’ve added some color adjustment for the background, the reason of doing that was trying to make the main focus on the camel, and to stand itself out of the image. Another reason was about lighting. In the picture, light source is at 11 o’clock, therefore, it would create shadows at the back of the camel. With shadow casting, it would give a impression of how large the creature is.

 

 

Shadow or negative space did not mean losing attention, but created more interesting looks in composition. Also, light went though the waterfall.  Everything added up and was put into together.

 

 

Final step was to put the light source, and re-light the whole scene again to make the picture looks accurate.

 

About time management

I did not really think about time management until I had a class last week.

Firstly, it started fairly with an interesting survey.

Here it is the survey:

• Number of hours of sleep
• Number of grooming hours
• Number of hours for meals/snacks per day – include preparation time
• Total travel time
• Total time for scheduled functions ( clubs, church, get-together, etc.)
• Total time work
• Total time class
• Total time socializing, dates

Formula 168 (hours in a week ) – ( sum )

Do not be surprised if you get a negative result.

People normally have problems with time management. Although my result is not too bad in this survey, I still feel I’m running out of time often, which means I actually spend time on something that I am not aware off.

When people talk about time management, often it comes with a thinking of creating a schedule. It is true that scheduling might help in a organized way. However, in most cases, people go off schedules, or there is something else coming up which is not in the plan.

I would suggest to make a weekly list with deadlines. An advantage of using a list is that people can add up pop-up events when they need to. Also, highlighting important events will help people sorting out their mind. Knowing what is more essential or which has higher priority will give a better idea of how to manage or schedule their work flow. Good implementation of weekly list will complete people’s work in time, but leaves some free time to rest off, which will lead the way to success in the end of the day.