Character Design Class Starts August 28

Josh O'Brien

Escape Studios is excited to welcome Josh O'Brien, our newest tutor at Escape Studios.

Josh will be teaching our four week character design class this summer, starting on 28th August and running until the end of September.

Josh is an experienced visual development artist and character designer. Past and present clients include Ash Gaming, Oxford University Press, Capstone publishing, Melwood Pictures and Zondervan Publishing.

Our four week character design class is an intensive summer course designed to take artists through all the stages necessary to submit polished character design work to studios.

As with all our classes at Escape Studios, it is taught by an experienced industry tutor and is focused on industry-relevant outcomes.

"Roboto" - design by Josh O'Brien

Week 1 - Introduction to Character Design.
Introductory Exercises. Creativity, ideas and inspiration for stories. Gesture drawing, fast sketches, and Research.
Creating designs which have character.
Single images that illustrate personality and character. Design drawings. Situations and character-driven scenarios.

Week 2 - Industry character design process.
A close look at the work of some leading character designers and how they work. Art Direction. Principles of design and visual development.

Week 3 - Character Design Technique
Designing animal characters. How to base designs on real life. Animal anatomy, Staging and character. Designing human characters. Life drawing, human anatomy, gesture drawing and character poses.

Week 4 - Turnarounds and Model Packs
Character Situations. The interaction of character with story. How do our characters fit into the overall story? Model Packs, Turnarounds, Blend Shapes and Rigging Studies for CG. Industry briefing.

You can see Josh's excellent work here.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link.  To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here.  For the next 12 week animation course, click here. And to apply for the next evening class in Producing Animation, see this page.