storyboarding and character design...

I really love both storyboarding and character design and really want to get a lot better at both. I want to do a lot more research into how artists have come up with and created such amazing ideas for film and in particular character designs that just seem to work so perfectly for what they are designed for.

Derek's lesson on storyboarding was really interesting and it was great to use our script as it meant we could see how it could have been done and greatly improved. It was good to see how everyone else would have done some of the shots we used and I definitely learnt hat there should have been much more thought about the set up of each frame.

I understand now that it is important to focus on the meaning behind each shot and the reasoning behind every object or position. There is a reason for everything that is placed in a film. It would be interesting to watch a film with this in mind and think a lot more about why certain angles it is filmed at or objects in the background.

For the next lecture we are looking at character design. This is an area I'm really interested in and have had very little practise at. I want to learn as much as I can and do a lot of research into it and get lots of my own ideas down and develop some characters of my own in my spare time to try and improve.


I think in the past there have been loads of very well designed characters. Many of them extremely simple, particularly for 2D animation so that could be drawn by many, however recently the character designs have become so detailed and realistic it can be quite shocking. I recently saw Avatar and the character designs I found to be stunning.



They wouldn't look right to be human, and the skin and colouring used just works so well to create a new and completely different creature that everyone can feel emotional towards and have an understanding for.

Another character that I love is Wall-E. His design is to technical he could be a real-life working structure. The fact he is very square and mechanical and one of many that is made for a specific purpose almost makes it hard for him to become humanised, but there is such a character to him. I think the texture of his design works perfectly and is so wonderfully detailed.




Another character I think is well designed is stitch. Although the design is a lot simpler and also changing through the film a fair amount, he doesn't really clarify as a dog or alien or an anything, and at the beginning of the film he is characterised as a menace and not that appealing, however again this is a character that you love by the end of the film for such a simple idea.




Having said that, Pixar's luxo Jr. is a character that is very hard to beat. Although the design is very simple and could be a real desk lamp being filmed, the character and animation of it is so brilliant that it becomes an object that the audience can relate with and feel emotions for.



I would love to be able to create or design a character that people can feel some kind of emotion for, whether its love or hate, and that works well for the role it's created for.