Humber
3rd Semester Production Art Course
Character Design Assignment
(Worth 40% of 3rd semester grade)
For the first section of this course we'll be focussing on character design as it relates to Production Art. We'll be using the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as our premise.
Your assignment is to come up with a series of conceptual designs for both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. From these concept designs, we will choose the appropriate elements that will make up the final design of each of them. You will then do a series of dynamic poses of the characters, appropriate to the given script, and then choose down to the final 10 full body poses and 10 facial expressions for each one. These will then be presented as formal model sheets for grading.
All drawings must be no smaller than 8 1/2” x 11” and no larger than 11” x 17”.
All illustrations must be appropriately labeled with student’s name clearly written in lower right hand corner (no signatures - first name and last name only).
All design elements must be hand drawn in pencil and may (but not necessarily) be cleaned up in pen. You may scan your drawings and composit them in Photoshop for final presentation. You may also finalize any designs with shading/colorization appropriate to make the design clearer. You must submit both the line drawings and final shaded/colored versions together. Shading and coloring the designs will not improve the final grading. A poorly designed structure with bad perspective will not be improved by any shading and or coloring and if anything will diminish your grade as the time wasted would have been better used in making the design and perspective stronger.
Principles Involved
• One and two point perspective
• Solid structural drawing
• Anatomy
• Proportion
• Volume & Mass
• Planes
• Staging & Composition
• Solid 3D drawing
• Shape & Form
• Construction Drawing
• Silhouette
• Pose & Mood
• Balance
• Line of Action
• "S" Curves
• "C" Curves
• Simplicity & Clarity
• Details
• Appeal
• Rhythm
• Stretch & Squash
• Straights & Curves
• Weight
• Torque & Twist
• Foreshortening
• Anchor Points
• Angles & Tilts
Script
Use the outline provided here as the basis for the designs.
Thought Process
Begin by simply thinking through the scenario of the doctor mixing up the potion and drinking it and then transforming.
As yourself a series of questions about the doctor. What kind of doctor is he? How big is his practice? What type of patients does he see? Do his patients give him a lot of problems or are they generally good natured? What could be the possible trigger that would start him in the direction of wanting to become someone different? Does he have a wife or girlfriend? How do they treat him? Are they the trigger? Is it power that he is after? Control? An alternate lifestyle that the doctor personna could never persue? Ask other questions of this nature that will help you develop a picture in your mind of who he is... not necessarily a visual picture at this point but rather a sence of who and what he is.
Write all these things down in a notebook so you can refer to it later.
Now start to think of the body shape. Remember the 5 basic shapes that you can work from:
Try some of them an add some arms and legs. Play around with the proportions a bit and try to zero in on which would be best for the doctor.
Next follow the same formula for the Mr Hyde character. Ask a bunch of questions and write them out. Try to make him the opposite of the doctor in every way.
Don't limit yourself to keeping the characters human. The doctor can be human and then turn into an animal or monster, or alien, or mythical beast, etc. Or the doctor can start as an animal and turn into anything. Don't limit your imagination, try as many options as you can think of.
Check out the following pages to see the process I went through on a freelance job. Follow it thorough from pages 38 - 57.
As we progress through this class, I'll do the same thing I did with you in 1st year and do the assignments at the same time.