Character Design Workshop #01

For our first character design workshop, we began to identify reoccurring elements in traditional heroes, villains and sidekicks with several examples.

Heroes often wear bright primary colours and are usually human-like so the audience can relate to him/her. They are confident and capable, or later learn to be through character development. In the CG film Robots (2005), the main hero bears the most human-like features of the group while wearing bright colours.



Villains predominantly exhibit dark colours such as purples and black while possessing vast power. They often have long elongated shapes that are sharp and angular, while acting melodramatically in their actions with deliberate hand movements/gestures. Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959) is a prime example of this.




Sidekicks usually have no specials powers where they are there to provide comedy relief to the scene. The sidekicks are often very physical in their actions as well as being flexible with a sort of rubber hose animation to emphasise their idiocy.




Later, we began some quick character sketches combining random elements together. Nothing too serious - just some fun to get into the swing of things. I drew the cards for 'Super Ninjas' (drawn on the left) and 'Galactic Cowboys' (drawn on the right).