Lynda - Character Development and Design - Mary Jane Begin

Lynda - Character Development and Design - Mary Jane Begin
Design Tutorial

Hi. I'm Mary Jane Begin, illustrator, author, and professor at Rhode Island School
of Design. As an illustrator, I've discovered that most of my best ideas, stories,
and images start with storytelling, and the stories always seem to start with the
characters. Developing good characters for any kind of project, designing a cast
of characters for animation, super heroes for comics, or lovable personalities for
books, all require insight into character development.

In this course, I wanna show you how to get to the heart and soul of the character,
and demonstrate the methods for bringing it to life through exploration, and things
like body shape, posture, facial expression, proportion, color, movement,
developing backstory, examining archetypes, and reviewing the kinds of famous character,
humanoid or beast, who captured our hearts.
To help you sharpen your own skills of designing characters, I'm gonna bounce between
several of my book projects, as well as share some of the work from a star-studded cast
of illustrators from all corners of the marketplace.


Your character ideas are waiting to come to life, so grab a pencil, and let's get started.


The heart of most narrative art lies in the characters in the story.
This course will reveal the "secret sauce" that makes a character memorable,
beloved, villainous, funny, or celebrated. Mary Jane Begin—illustrator, author,
and Rhode Island School of Design professor—explores character design from all
corners of the illustration universe, including cartoons, comics, feature animation,
gaming, kid's books, and advertising.

Mary Jane explains how the components of good character design can be broken down
into concrete elements. She shows how body shape, posture, anatomy, facial expression,
costume, color, movement, and abstract aspects like archetypes and environment bring
a character to life.

The lessons are illustrated with examples from Mary Jane's books, as well as famous,
heart-warming characters created by a group of extraordinary character designers.

Topics include:

Capturing the heart and soul of a character
Using the right tools
Relying on archetypes
Adding motion
Painting shapes and silhouettes
Understanding anatomy and proportion
Creating easy-to-read facial expressions
Coloring your character
Designing a cast of characters
Making fantasy creatures believable
Going from 2D to 3D







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