Monday, September 29, 2008

20 character design tips

Im read this from the internet
i post this jus to share with u guys about the "20 character design tips"
Enjoy!

Lacking character? Jon Burgerman drums up 20 tips for creating fantastic characters and the best ways to bring them to life
Character design can be a tricky beast to tackle, because although many of the classic characters familiar to us all through cartoons, entertainment and advertising look simple, that simplicity usually belies the many hours of work that have gone into their development.
document.write('');

From Mickey Mouse’s famous three-fingered hands – drawn to save production time when the character was first developed for animations in the 1920s – to the elegant simplicity of Homer Simpson, character design has always been about keeping it simple. But aside from clean lines and easily readable features, what else are you going to need to know? There’s knowing what to exaggerate and what to play down, what to add to give a hint of background and depth, and what to do to develop personality. Getting started can be the trickiest part in any character development project, but once you’ve got some ideas these tips will help you breath life into your creation…


1: Research and evaluateIt can be helpful to try and deconstruct why certain characters and their characteristics work and why some don’t. There’s no shortage of research material to be found, with illustrated characters appearing everywhere: on TV commercials, cereal boxes, shop signs, stickers on fruit, animations on mobile phones, and more. Study these characters and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them.

2: Design and planWhere will the character be seen and in what medium? This will have a direct bearing on how you go about your design. For example, if the character is for a mobile-phone screen, there’s no point designing it to have a lot of intricate details and features. Nathan Jurevicius says, regardless of the format, “The process of thinking up concepts always starts the same: paper, pencil, green tea... lots of thumbnails, written ideas, scratches and sketches over sketches.”

3: Who is it aimed at?Think about your audience. Characters aimed at young children, for example, are typically designed around basic shapes and bright colours. If you’re working for a client, the character’s target audience is usually predetermined, as Nathan Jurevicius explains: “Commissioned characters are usually more restrictive but no less creative. Clients have specific needs but also want me to do my ‘thing’. Usually, I’ll break down the core features and personality. For example, if the eyes are important then I’ll focus the whole design around the face, making this the key feature that stands out.”

4: Visual impactWhether you’re creating a monkey, robot or monster, you can guarantee there are going to be a hundred other similar creations out there. Your character needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people’s attention. When devising The Simpsons, Matt Groening knew he had to offer the viewers something different. He reckoned that when viewers were flicking through TV channels and came across the show, the characters’ unusually bright yellow skin colour would grab their attention.

5: Line qualities and stylesThe drawn lines of which your character is composed can go some way to describing it. Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character. Sune Ehlers characters are bold and seem to dance on the page, which echoes his approach to drawing them. He explains: “Drawing a doodle is about decisive pen-manoeuvring. A strong line for me comes from strength and rhythm.”

6: Exaggerated characteristicsExaggerating the defining features of your character will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identif y the character’s key qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and helps emphasise certain personality traits. If your character is strong, don’t just give it normal-sized bulging arms, soup them up so that they’re five times as big as they should be!

7: Colour me badColours can help communicate a character’s personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Comic-book reds, yellows and blues might go some way to giving hero qualities to a character.

8: Adding accessoriesProps and clothing can help to emphasise character traits and their background. For example, scruffy clothes can be used for poor characters, and lots of diamonds and bling for tasteless rich ones. Accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character’s personality, such as a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder or a maggot in a ghoul’s skull.

9: The third dimensionDepending on what you have planned for your character, you might need to work out what it will look like from all angles. A seemingly flat character can take on a whole new persona when seen from the side if, for example, it has a massive beer belly. If your character is going to exist within a 3D world, as an animation or even as a toy, working out its height, weight and physical shape is all important.

10: Conveying personalityInteresting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character; its personality is key as well. A character’s personality can be revealed through comic strips and animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn’t have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Personality can also be expressed simply in how the character has been drawn.

11: Express yourselfExpressions showing a character’s range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure’s emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Classic examples of this can be found in the work of the legendary Tex Avery: the eyes of his Wild Wolf character often pop out of its head when it’s excited. Another example of how expressions communicate motions is deadpan Droopy, who barely registers any sort of emotion at all.

12: Goals and dreamsThe driving force behind a character’s personality is what it wants to achieve. This missing ‘something’ – be it riches, a girlfriend or solving a mystery – can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. Often the incompleteness or flaws in a character are what make it interesting.

13: Building back storiesIf you’re planning for your character to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character’s back story can be more interesting than the character’s present adventures… or not, in the case of the Star Wars prequels.

14: Quick on the drawDon’t be afraid to experiment and ignore all the rules and tips about planning and crafting the look of your character. Going against what is supposed to be the right way of doing something could create unexpected and exciting results. When artist Yuck creates his characters he doesn’t really know what he’ll draw. “I just listen to music and draw the result dependent on my mood: freaky or cute. I always want to have a drawing that I find interesting. I then work more on the character after it’s okay with me and my brain,” he says.

15: Hone, plan and polishInstead of just drawing or doodling without too much pre-planning, Nathan Jurevicius prefers to take a different approach. “I take a long time creating finished looking roughs and also thinking about how the character could be expanded beyond a 2D artwork, what the character will do in a specific world, and how it speaks and acts,” he says.

16: Drawn in mudHaving decent materials to work with is useful, but not essential, for the early planning of your character. A lot of amazing characters were successfully designed years ago when no one had personal computers and Photoshop was just a dream. The drawings of your character should still work when rendered on paper with a simple pen or, as Sune Ehlers puts it, “The character should still be able to work with a stick dipped in mud and drawn on asphalt.”

17: Real-world drawingIan, of I Like Drawing, generates some of his characters away from both the computer and the sketchbook, allowing outside elements to influence his work. “I really like characters that interact with their surroundings,” he says. “The environment normally suggests an idea and then I let my strange mind do the rest. I prefer drawing in the real world with a pen instead of on the computer, because it feels good and odd things happen.”

18: Release the beastShow people your creations and ask them what they think. Don’t just ask whether they like them or not. Instead, see if they can pick up the personalities and traits of your characters. Find who you think is the suitable or ideal audience for your work and get feedback specifically from them about it.

19: Beyond the characterIn the same way that you create a history for your character, you need to create an environment for it to help further cement believability in your creation. The world in which the character lives and interacts should in some way make sense to who the character is and what it gets up to.

20: Fine-tuning a figureQuestion each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived. Illustrator Neil McFarland advises: “Think about the meaning of the word ‘character’. You’re supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they’re like to meet and how they might move. I think it’s strange how creating characters for the sake of it has become a distinct branch of graphic design.”


http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/features/20_character_design_tips


Sunday, September 28, 2008

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Assessment & Submission Requirements

DEADLINE & SUBMISSION : Monday 29-9-2008
Project1 Isometric Pixel Art

1. CD-R/ DVD-R - Digital research + References
- Digital work files (PSD, JPEG)

2. Full colour printouts of final artwork in A4

3. Documentations : Mindmapping, sketches, visual development, research & references

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Colors Palletes




1.Hope



2. Peace land



3. Snooker



4. His-story



5. A pair



6. Natural



7. Nightmare



8. Melaka



9. Nice-day



10. Cool



11. War coming



12. Harmony



13. Full of hope



14. Wonderland



15. Natural



16. Man-made




17. Blue



18. Romantic


19. Left out



20. home

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Crying women

This is a popular legend- The Crying Women

Many versions of La Llorona's origin exist.
Here is a common version. Maria aka La Llorona thought she was very beautiful, so she wanted the handsomest man to marry. So she got what she wanted. Once they were married they had a boy and after that a girl. Last they had boy. Maria's husband started to work out of town for a month. He came to visit his children, but not his wife. He didn't pay attention to her. Once Maria's husband came to visit them, but he came with a woman. He talked to his children and told them he was going to marry another woman. Maria was so mad that she got mad at her own children for no reason. So that's when she took them to the river and drowned them. Then she realized what she had done and started to cry for her children and killed herself. Next morning a man from the village came with the story that he found Maria dead by the riverbank. So the villagers buried her. In the very middle of the night they heard a woman crying for her children and that's when they found out it was Maria's ghost. People then started calling her "La Llorona".



1933 Mexican film La Llorona

Qi Xi

The story of Cowherd and Weaver Girl

A young cowherd named Niulang (In chinese: 牛郎; pin yin: niú láng; literally "the cowherd") happens across seven fairy sisters bathing in a lake. Encouraged by his playful friend the ox, he steals their clothes and waits to see what will happen. The fairy sisters choose the youngest and most beautiful sister Zhinü (In chinese: 织女; pin yin: zhī nǚ) to bring back their clothing. She does so, but since Niulang has seen her naked, she must agree to his request for marriage. She proves to be a wonderful wife, and Niulang a good husband. They lived happily and had two children. But the Goddess of Heaven finds out that a mortal has married one of the fairy girls. Down on Earth, Niulang is very upset that his wife is gone. Suddenly, his cow begins to talk telling him that if he kills him and puts on his hide, he will be able to go up to Heaven to find his wife. With tears flowing, he killed the cow, put on the skin and carrying his two children with him and off he went to Heaven to find Zhinü. The Goddess found out he had come and was very angry. Taking out her hairpin, the Goddess scratches a wide river in the sky to separate the two lovers forever.

Zhinü must sit forever on one side of the river, sadly weaving on her loom, while Niulang watches her from a far place and takes care of their two children.

But once a year all the magpies in the world take pity on them and fly up into heaven to form a bridge (
鵲橋, "the bridge of magpies", Que Qiao) so the lovers may be together for a single night, the seventh night of the seventh moon.

It is said that if it rains on the night of Qi Xi, they are the tears of Niulang and Zhinü crying at the misery of their life.

Isometric Pixel Art (project)





Saturday, September 13, 2008

Isometrix Pixel Art

History of Isometric Pixel Art
Pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal in1982. Some others traditional art forms, such as cross-stitch, masaic and beadwork, bear some similarity to pixel art. It constructing pictures out from a small colored units analogous to the pixels of modern digital computing. A similar concept on a much bigger scale can be seen in the mass game.

Pixel Art can be found at:
Pixel art lives both in and beyond computer screen. Artists design pixel art posters, magazine covers, album covers, desktop wallpapers, paintings, “pixelish” video ads and even pixelated tattoos.






Dig Dug (Game)




Froger (Game)



Burp! Brazilian and German bloggers Thiago, Pi, Jojo and Mariana present themselves as friendly and laughing pixel characters.


Pixel Art Desktop Wallpaper
This artwork was created by Juan Manuel Daporta (Caracas, Venezuela) in MSpaint in about 8 months in and out. Impressive.


3 Square
A painting in the pixel art style. Pixels also live beyond computer screens. Notice how well we can understand the idea behind the pixelated painting. That’s a hard thing to achieve.


Kirby’s Cupcake
A painting in the pixel-art-style. Created by Ashley Anderson.


Pixel City
Notice the how well different perspectives are used. For instance, Sony and Coca-Cola logos are orthogonal to each other.

URLS/ links of my foundings
1.http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/
2.http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/index.php
3.http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/05/pixels-go-mad-the-celebration-of-pixel-art/

Some example of Isometric pixel art



a sign board at Ponos