Character Design

So I was asked to create a Blog about Character Design for the studio Austin Visuals, and I thought I'd also post it here.

When it comes to designing characters for film, television, and every conceivable type of story – we always need to start from the same beginning.  We have to ask ourselves who is this character that we are trying to create?  What do they stand for, where have they been, and where are they going?

            A character’s story is immensely important, so much so that story and design go hand-in-hand.  As designers, we must realize that every decision we make serves a purpose; every detail needs to convey an insight into whom it is that we’re designing.  While in the real world, it’s quite possible that you just roll out of bed, groggily stumble over to the dresser and pick out whatever happens to be on top of your clothes pile – this is never the case in animation (and if it is, well then that is already telling us something about the character).

            A neat pressed, professional suit, a ratty band t-shirt with holes – the clothes on our characters can wordlessly tell an audience essentials to the story that needn’t be told in wasted dialogue.  In a short story I’ve written, one of my characters wears an eclectic mix of cowboy and Native-American garments, and this sets up the audience to understand he is from a mix of two distinct cultures.  And this is even more obvious when contrasting against other characters.
            But character design is never as simple as just clothing design.  In animation we are not limited to the real world, thusly we are free to explore all manner of shapes and sizes, and characters that would never exist in the real world.  A few examples I would like to allude to come from some of the giants of the animation industry and to begin with I want to start with DreamWorks Animation.

Now as a preface, I do not work for DWA (yet, here’s hoping to someday) and outside of a few light conversations with their animators I can’t really say if I’m even accurate here – but my interpretations as audience member should prove a point.  In Kung-Fu Panda, we’re greeted by Po the Panda.  A character completely out of place with the rest of the town.  He is fat, soft, clumsy and too big for his adoptive father’s noodle store.  Immediately, all dialogue aside, we know that Po does not belong here.  His design serves as an antithesis to the standard martial arts masters that we as an audience have become familiar with over the years.  Even his color pattern of black and white serves as an allusion to yin and yang (literally referenced in Kung Fu Panda 2).  Yet his ‘soft’ design also allows us to see into his personality, a soft and loving person.

Another wonderful example in my opinion from DreamWorks, is Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon.  Even the name of the character itself is a thought out design.  We actually see that Toothless does indeed have teeth, but they are often sheathed away in his gums.  But why?  Well I believe this particular design plays on how an audience perceives danger.  To be without teeth conveys being either a baby, or so old that you’ve lost your teeth.  You’re no longer a danger.  And as this is the first “friendly” dragon we’ve come across, that Hiccup has to befriend, we as an audience need to know that he isn’t an inherent danger.  His designs in movement are even based off of cats and puppies, animals that we as humans are hardwired to find adorable and non-threatening.

Speaking of dogs, let’s look at another lovable character, this time from Pixar.  In the movie Up, we’re introduced to the talking dog Dug.  He is one of many dogs in the film that can talk, and yet one of the only ones we don’t find threatening.  This can be attributed to his design.  Pixar wisely chose a yellow lab (maybe a golden retriever?) as the model for Dug, and they gave him a slightly tubby model, well rounded features, large soft eyes – how could anyone not love him, especially as he talks like a naïve child in pursuit of his bird.  Yet the other dogs are all menacing and angry, their designs are of dog breeds we have come to know as aggressive – Dobermans, Rottweiler, Bulldogs, and Pit bulls.  This simple design change lets the audience know that they are the bad guys.  Up also presents us with Carl, the old man who is a square when it comes to having fun and is literally designed to look like a square, his whole world is a simple box, contained, nothing adventurous, and we can see this quite squarely, in his square design.

Pixar has another great example of character design, and that’s in Merida from Brave.  Her fiery, crazy hair serves to further her character’s attitudes, showing that her demeanor can’t be tamed, and in one scene she even breaks out of the seams of her dress, literally breaking her design to show her will won’t be contained.

Character design stretches far beyond mere physical appearance, encompassing sound and movement as well.  When we design our characters, we must always keep asking ourselves, ‘why do they appear to the audience the way they do?’  An unexpected contrast can create humor in situations (the Ugly Step Sister in Shrek is a wonderful example) or present any number of scenarios.  As the designer, it’s up to you to make it mean something.

            But before I leave you, we should also consider one last thing.  Stereotypes.  These are dangerous territories to step into.  They can be your best friends, easily setting up the audience to understand something, or they can be an ugly cop-out that leaves the audience dissatisfied.  It’s easy to create a villain who is tall, thin, and bony (Jafar, Scar, Pitch, Rasputin, Hades, etc.) but it takes a little extra imagination to create something that deviates from that, and often that deviation can create a much better character.  Voldemort from Harry Potter has a snake-like nose in the films, something that touches on his loss of humanity; and Wormtongue from the Lord of the Rings has no eyebrows, another small change that immediately creates unease in the audience without a single word being uttered.  At worst, stereotypes can be highly offensive to the audience, as anyone who has seen Star Wars Episode 1 can attest to (talking about you Jar-Jar and Watto). 

So if we can, as designers, we want to steer as far away from stereotypes as possible, and create imaginative characters, whose designs push the bounds of reality, telling as much a story about who they are and where they’re from as the stories that they themselves are in.