This complex process contains many steps, moving the concept from a rough sketch to a fully rendered form. We will explore the key phases of 2D character design, from brainstorming the initial idea to finalizing the vectors and textures that bring the character to life.
Developing the Character Concept
Every great character starts with a spark of inspiration. The initial concept sets the trajectory for the entire design process, establishing the character’s role in the story, look, personality and more.
Identifying the Character’s Role
One of the first things designers establish is the part the character will play in the overall story. This informs many of the creative decisions around their look and personality. Here are some of the most common character archetypes:
- Protagonist: The central character through which the audience experiences the story. Usually, the “hero” drives the story forward.
- Antagonist: Provides conflict for the protagonist. Often, an enemy or “villain” that creates obstacles.
- Sidekick: Supports the protagonist on their journey. Often provides comic relief.
- Mentor: Offers wisdom and guidance to help the protagonist grow. Often an elder or authority figure.
- Love interest: A romantic partner for the protagonist that becomes a source of motivation or conflict.
The role sets expectations for other areas of the design, like the character’s visual traits and personality dimensions.
Building Out Details
With the broad strokes defined, designers start fleshing out specifics that bring the character to life in viewers’ minds.
Key details include:
- Visual Details: Age, gender expression, species/ethnicity, distinctive physical traits
- Backstory: Origins, life story, prior events that shaped them
- Personality: Attitude, quirks, speech patterns, emotional tendencies
- Abilities: Skills, superpowers, and weaknesses that influence their potential roles in the story
Brainstorming compelling specifics makes characters feel multi-dimensional, like real people. The visuals and personality should align with their intended role, too.
Concept Art and Feedback
The conceptual stage isn’t complete without testing ideas out. Designers create concept art – rough sketches depicting the character – to crystallize details visually.
Sharing concept art and descriptions with the creative team and target audience garners constructive feedback. This helps refine the concept and build confidence before significant time is invested in full production.
Adjustments may be made based on feedback to meet expectations better. Once finalized, the concept art acts as the north star guiding the entire design process.
Building the Base: Character Turnarounds
With a clear concept in hand, designers shift from imagining to realizing the character visually. This starts by developing the character’s visual form through turnarounds.
Turnarounds are a rotating series of drawings depicting the character from multiple angles. This reveals their form from all sides, establishing the structural foundation which animation and final rendering will be built upon.
Shape and Proportion
A turnaround starts with the general shape and proportions. The character’s form should align with their species, age, body type and other conceptual traits that impact their silhouette and size.
Guidelines help maintain consistency for elements like:
- Height, weight and muscle tone
- Limb proportions and length
- Torso, head and facial proportions
The foundational shape suggests details that logically align with it while allowing customization to make the character distinct.
Pose Variety
With the base form defined, turnarounds depict the character in diverse poses. Varying posture exposes how forms compress, overlap and stretch while moving.
Common poses covered include:
- Front and side stationary neutral poses
- Dynamic running, jumping and action gestures
- Emotive facial expressions and body language
- Perspective-shifted angles like foreshortening
Varying the pose offers multifaceted visual information to support animation later on. The diverse angles also help assess if shapes and details read clearly from all sides.
Defining Details
Within the established form, any distinctive visual details are added to the turnarounds. This includes elements like:
- Hairstyle and facial hair
- Ear shape and placement
- Body markings, tattoos and clothing
- Accessories like jewelry and hats
Refining colors and smaller accents happens in later stages. However, core structural elements are depicted to evaluate shape and silhouette.
The turnarounds become a complete rotational map of the character with their physical form and movement possibilities clearly visualized. This acts as an anatomy reference for animation.
Animation: Bringing Life Through Motion
While turnarounds establish the structure, animation brings the character to life through motion. Animators use principles of movement, timing and spacing to suggest a personality.
Movement Style
The animation style sets expectations for how the character will move within their world. Common animation styles include:
- Realistic: Smooth, naturalistic movement that mimics real physics
- Cartoony: Exaggerated, over-the-top motions that stretch possibilities
- Stylized: Unique movement style tied to the world and personality
The animation style should align with the original concept to avoid disjointedness between the visuals and motion. Characters with more realistic proportions suit subtle animation, while a cartoon character may have more dramatic movements.
Keyframes and In-Betweens
The building blocks of animation are individual frames. Keyframes depict the most story-critical poses, while in-betweens fill the space between them to create fluid transitions.
For example, for a jump:
- Key 1: Crouched anticipation
- Key 2: Full airborne stretch
- Key 3: Land and recoil
In-betweens connect these, breaking down the arc of motion. Good animation utilizes principles of timing, spacing and movement to suggest weight, force and personality through dynamic frames.
Motion Tests
As with concept art, testing animation is critical before investing heavily. Motion tests rough out basic movement cycles and actions to evaluate timing and personality integration.
Simple cycles like walk cycles and idles are created first. These establish the basics like posture and default energy level. More complex cycles and key story moments build out from there.
Feedback from this testing phase determines if the movement aligns with the character’s concept before further animating. Adjustments in movement style or posing may occur to better match expectations set by the established character concept.
Realizing Details: Line Art and Colors
With the form and motion established, designers shift focus towards realizing the smaller yet critical details that make the character pop. Line art and colors transform the rough animation into a polished final character.
Line Art Cleanup
While turnarounds visualize form, the line art tightens up those shapes into crisp, readable lines. As animation establishes movement, line art defines the specific curves and edges that bring structure and details to life.
Line art clarifies forms like:
- Silhouette and contour lines
- Interior face and body lines
- Clothing fold and accessory details
Thoughtful, clean line work makes designs more readable and attractive. Stylized line art can also enhance personality, with bolder lines matching louder characters.
Color Palettes
Color palettes set the tone for the character’s look and personality while clarifying visual details. Thoughtful color schemes utilize principles like:
- Harmony: Complementary or contrasting colors
- Value contrast: Lights and darks to separate shapes
- Saturation: Vibrant vs muted to focus attention
- Temperature: Warm and cool colors to convey mood
Along with a default palette, alternative options are created for situations like night scenes or emotional states. Consistent palettes establish cohesive integration when the character appears in different lighting contexts.
Rendering and Textures
While line art and flat colors define form, rendering and textures, increase realism through simulated lighting and materials. Popular rendering approaches include:
- Cel shading: Gradient shadows with crisp edges
- Hatching: Shaded texture from crosshatched lines
- Painting: Smooth blending of color gradients
Textures like cloth wrinkles, hair strands and skin pores enhance authenticity. The level of rendering detail mirrors the stylization established in previous stages. A highly realistic character merits more rendering than a simple cartoon.
Balancing all elements creates a cohesive final character with colors and textures that harmonize with the established linework and silhouettes.
Finalization: Refining Animation and Art
With the character visually designed, the refinement stage perfects the asset for implementation. Animation gets polished through constraints like character rigs, while art receives finishing touches.
Animation Cleanup
Early animation conveys basics through rough keyframes. The polishing phase enhances the motion through the following:
- Clean line work standardizing details between frames
- Additional in-betweens for increased smoothness
- Finalized timing and spacing for fluidity
For efficiency, character rigs may be created that constrain movements according to the established guidelines. This saves animating from scratch each time.
Some asset packages skip polishing animation in favor of rigging for modification later. However, clean animation is still critical for reference.
Final Art Details
Just as animation gets polished, so does the visual art. At this stage, all details established in the concept come together, including:
- Distinctive elements like tattoos and clothing decals
- Consistent accessories and props that identify the character
- Effects like glowing eyes or smoke
- Dynamic elements like capes or hair that move with the character
Refined colors, lighting and textures also help the character feel like a cohesive, living entity. The refinement process creates a recognizable, distinctive asset ready for games or video.
Conveying Personality Through Design
Technical skill creates quality character art and animation. However, the element that resonates most with audiences is personality expression. A character’s charm and spirit connect with viewers, inspiring fondness.
Personality integration starts from the conceptual stages, which include backstory and characteristic decisions. Every phase of the design process offers opportunities to infuse personality, including:
- Visual Design Choices: Distinctive props, clothing style, colors and physical quirks reflect personality
- Animation Style: Energy level, timing, movement fluidity and poses communicate personality
- Reactions and Interactions: Distinct emotive gestures and responses help characters express unique reactions
Fleshing out these personal touches brings characters to life. A timid character may have muted colors and hesitant gestures, while a bold show-off character adopts bright hues and broad poses.
Matching visuals with consistent personality cues creates harmony between a character’s looks, emotions and actions. Getting these details right keeps audiences invested in the characters as the story unfolds.
Last Words: Drawing Viewers In
The long journey from sketch to screen requires thoughtful ideation paired with strong technical execution.
However, the reward is characters that feel multidimensional, like people viewers want to see more of as they come to life through art and motion.
Well-crafted characters draw audiences into new worlds and compelling stories by making an emotional connection. Each design choice aims to realize the creators’ vision while resonating with target viewers.
Balancing imagination, problem-solving, and empathy allows artists to send vibrant characters leaping off the page into fans’ imaginations as they experience adventures together.
