Last Call for Character Design on 2 September

Designs by Josh O'Brien

Last Call for our 4 week Character Design class with Blue Zoo designer Josh O'Brien, starting on 2nd September.

Josh will be the lead tutor for this 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.

Character Design
Josh's class teaches students to design characters for different media, with a strong focus on animation and on industry relevance.

This 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.

Course Content

"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 learn 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

Josh O'Brien

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.