(upbeat music) - People want to see that you understand an animation pipeline. They want to see that you
understand that you have to design something that an animator
overseas can look at and translate into movement. And they won't be able
to know exactly what that character looks like from all angles if it's just a single,
isolated, really cool drawing. And so the things that
you should be putting in your portfolio when
you're a character designer are exploration, turnaround,
special poses, and
expressions. And this turnaround is
what is going to inform the animation studios that
are moving your character because you don't design
and move your own character. Somebody else is gonna
need to handle that. And a lot of times we'll show what do the eyes look like closed? What does the mouth look
like closed and open? What is the bottom of the foot look like? We need to add all of that
information so that the people we pass it off to know what
to do with the character. And that really demons
trates that you understand the pipeline, that you're not just drawing
a cool drawing for yourself. You're thinking about every other step. I would say 80% of my
job is special poses. So, showing that not only
can we do this turnaround, but that the design works so well, that you can have her
act and move and pose. That is so, so valuable in a
character design portfolio. - (gasps) Bunk beds! If I can see that turnaround, you've got a wide range of emotions, maybe fear, excitement, anger. If you c
an show all of
that and it all works, that's just going to put you
leagues above the person that has one standalone image of
a cool looking character. The next thing is, do you
have a clear line of action? You really wanna push the lines and make them feel like a cartoon. The medium is animation. We really want to take advantage of it, make the poses as fun as possible. Draw a line of action
before you draw the rest of the special pose and
try to have it follow it. And you'll just kind of feel t
he movement, and a great line of action
will make your drawing feel more alive than if you
just kind of winged it and you weren't following it. The next one is silhouette. Also a very important
part of character design and special poses. And when you have a special pose, you want to make sure
that if you were to turn the whole character flat, if
you were to fill it all in, in a silhouette, would it still read? Could you still understand the action? So if you look at SpongeBob, you can see the tw
o ways he's
drawing this key, for example. In the left one, you can clearly see his
fingers are holding the key. It's not obscured. It's a great pose that
has an instant read. Versus on the right, you don't
really know what he's doing. The fist is on the shape of it, so it doesn't have a clear silhouette. And because animation is so fast, we only have 11 minutes
to get our point across, every single time that
you can make your drawing as clear as possible. It's just gonna be a better
experience
for the viewer. And it'll be a better design all around. A really, really big part of design is trying to break up that evenness because it'll make everything
so much more appealing and so much more fun to look at. And if you try pushing it, even just like lasso tool and Photoshop, make it bigger or smaller, I think you'll really notice like, oh wow. If I just made the head like much bigger, it's much more appealing. Do your best incorporate,
as much as you can. And don't feel like, self-conscio
us if it's not
a hundred percent ready, you're probably more ready
than you think you are. - I'm ready!
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