Following the previous post about the role in post-production. From my experience making some short films as well as illustration. I found to also have an interest in the Character designer role in the pre-production stages.
Character designing has been a role that has interested me even before I chose to do animation as a major and I was still doing illustrations. I loved the idea of being able to create a character’s visuals just from the descriptions written down in a novel of the characters’ features or just from notes provided by a director or concept art from the concept artist/director. Character designers need to be able to portray a character’s personality through their facial expressions, poses and outfit or appearance and the possibilities of how they might look would solely depend on the creativity and inspiration of the character designer as well as their understanding of the story provided and how said story wants to express the character to the audience. This is where a character’s design could make or break how they are seen by the audience and how impactful they are going to be.
Being a character designer also does not mean that I would be locked into only the film animation industry as I could still use said skills in the gaming industry too in their production process of creating a playable character for the consumer to be immersed with and connect with throughout the gameplay.
I feel like some of the character design workshops we had in both the first and second year, massively helped in my understanding of what goes into the thought process of making a character design and how to make them standout and unique to the other characters out in the art world. I hope to be able to develop more on these skills with each projects or through creating new characters .