Character Design is Back - 2 September 2019

Josh O'Brien

Save the date! Our Character Design class is returning to Escape Studios next September, taught by leading character designer Josh O'Brien.

Josh will be teaching our full-time intensive four week character design class, starting on Monday 2nd September and running until Friday 27th September.

Josh is an experienced visual development artist and character designer, currently working at Blue Zoo animation in London. Past clients include Ash Gaming, Oxford University Press, Capstone publishing, Melwood Pictures and Zondervan Publishing.

Josh is a character designer at Blue Zoo

What's this all about?
Designing characters for different media, with a strong focus on industry relevance. 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, whether for TV, feature films, games or new media.

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

What's in the course?

"Roboto" - design by Josh O'Brien

Week 1 - Introduction to Character Design.
This week will begin with introductory exercises, exploring creativity, ideas and finding inspiration for stories.

Students will also touch on gesture drawing, fast sketches, and ways to research characters.

How do students create designs which have character? And how can this character be captured in a single, still image?

Josh will also explore situations and character-driven scenarios.

Week 2 - Industry character design process.
In week two students take a close look at the work of some leading character designers and how they work. This week includes an exploration of art Direction, and principles of design and visual development.

Week 3 - Character Design Technique
This week included techniques to designing animal characters, and how to base designs on real life, including animal anatomy, staging and character. Students will look at how to designing human characters, including life drawing, human anatomy, gesture drawing and character poses.

Week 4 - Turnarounds and Model Packs
Character design is very much about making your work industry-ready, so that it can be used withint the studio pipeline. This final week will include character Situations, the interaction of character with story, model packs, turnarounds, blend shapes and rigging studies for the CG dept. The final week culminates in an industry briefing, mirroring a live studio brief.

To sign up for the course, follow this link to the official site.

To see more about our character design tutor, you can see Josh's excellent work at his official site 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.