Hi everybody! I just wanted to ask if any AWNers here works as a character designer for an animation studio? I have some coworkers who works as layout artists, storyboard artists, background artists, but I have never knew someone who works as a character designer for a tv series.
How do you do it? I mean, what is your regular day like? Is it the same as in animation, where a director hands out a scene for you, well, in your case a character to design? Obviously I have no idea how a character designer works, so are there any here or know how one works?
Cheerio :)
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I've done it.
Not to a great degree, but I've done it occasionally over the years--my forte is storyboarding.
The process is usually pretty straightforward: you get a script, maybe a series style-guide/model pack or concept art depending on what stage of the production you are working on, and you go at it based on the needs of the script.
You run the design by the supervisor/director and make changes.
The difference in designs between a pilot episode and a epsiode in the body of the series is that the pilot will usually have you set the tone of the series. Changes at that stage are many because the series has to find its footing. You do a LOT of drawing.
Later on, once the style has been set, its pretty clear-cut.You typically will do just one drawing of a secondary/incidental character once the series in deep into production.
You base your style off the series look and design characters to fit that look.
Most styles have some kind of visual accent to distinguish them, so you just maintain those accents.
A regular day might have you do a number of designs, the actual count being determined by your allottment and the expectations of the production.
You could be expected to do 5 designs, or 25 --it depends on your skills and output. In this case a "design" is considered a rough that is approved to be cleaned. Sometimes its just a single static pose, sometimes you might do a static and several action poses per character.
Pay is either by design or a set hourly wage.
Your job is to accomodate all the needs of production with your design. You have to avoid extraneous details and provide some personality and poise with the character. If the character has unsual details or gimmicks, you might have to do additional views to clarify them.
Done right you should get a sense of WHO the character is just by looking at them, not just what they look like.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Thanks, Ken. I imagine that working as a designer probably requires you to draw A LOT, especially when there are a lot of incidental characters in a scene.
When in the production stage does a character designer comes in? And what should be the qualifications for one? To be honest, I sort of overlooked this position in the animation pipeline. What made me curious is probably that because in my home country we never get to develop our own shows and production.
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I know a character designer who can do some work cheap. Contact em for more detail.
we have one person who does majority of the main characters and two others who can pick up with the extra or crowd chaps.
since we are relatively small studio (about 15-20) we dont have anyone that just does designs all day.
also, since we do stage layouts post storyboard, our characters are mostly done at one go and done back to back. any additions during production is relatively light and incdental.