A successful character design is able to provide audiences with important context to their role within a story, relation to other characters, and place within the world they inhabit. In this 8-week course, we’ll explore the building blocks of character concept design: anatomy, costume design, shape language, expressions, character turnarounds, worldbuilding, and more! With a new lesson focus each week, guided in-class exercises to reinforce learning, and optional out-of-class homework, students will develop their own original characters while learning how story and design work together. By the end of the class, students will walk away with polished concept sheets and the skills to continue creating unique character designs for future projects! This class is intended for intermediate to advanced artists who have BOTH a basic grasp on human/humanoid anatomy and an interest in character design/visual development for animation, comics, games, or other original content. Note: this class will focus primarily on humanoid designs. There will be some time dedicated to learning about designing anthropomorphic characters, but we will NOT be focusing on fully animal or robot/mech designs.

With artist Nala J. Wu