Week 1

Assignment #1


Assignment Description
Now that you have your project theme and the story worked out, it's time to start designing characters for your film, animation, or video game.

For each of these types of projects there are minor characters that need to be designed. Below are examples of secondary characters from each of the three genres.

1.Monsters
-In video games, any monster that is not a boss. in movies and animations, any number of monsters that do not have a major speaking role. Zombies! Orcs!

2. Villagers
-These people help fill out your villages, towns and cities no matter what the medium. Think about the angry mob going to confront Dr. Frankenstein, or the crazy weirdo villagers in Wickerman (the original 1970's one of course). Merchants, Shopkeepers, Bar Patrons, etc.

3.Thugs/Soldiers
-Stormtroopers, Robin Hood's Merry Men, Space Marines, Resistance fighters

4.Random Encounters
-Some person the main character meets along the way that gives helpful advice, knowledge, items

5.Fodder/Ambient Creatures
-The equivalent of your rats, bats, crabs, birds and such. Not necessary to to concept unless they are somehow different from these creatures in real life. Also, the RC-controlled robot that zips around the floor in Star Wars








1.Start the assignment by doing pages and pages and pages and pages of thumbnails of various minor characters that would be appropriate for your project

2.Do visual research for your chosen story. Gather images that inspire you and that you feel would represent your story world. Collage them onto at least 2 11X17 pieces of paper (5 or 6 images per page, or more if you want. Youtube clips will be shown on the computer)

3.Do AT LEAST 20 (or more!) TOTAL THUMBNAIL DRAWINGS of AT LEAST 2 of the minor character types from above, or any others you can think of that were not listed above!

The only things that are absolutely due next week are the visual research and the story research, but you should start work on the other things










*Sean will help pick out which ones should be taken to the next phase of concepting

things to bear in mind
1. The design of these characters should not overshadow the main characters

2.Minor characters should embody many of the basic design cues of your project, more than any other characters

3. Sillhouette is important, but less important than it will be for future characters, who should stand out from "the crowd."