[Week VIII] Exploring Character Design book summary

Exploring Character Design is a book that explains all the major aspects of character and creature design. It explains the aspects of designing that trouble all artists about the research, conceptualization, style, synthesis, construction modes, expression and emotion, anatomical issues and locomotion, and corollary subjects.

The book is written for a wide variety of audiences. Many of the people who read this book (mostly two- or four- year college-level students) will plan a career in one of the many visual arts fields. Others will be individual working on their own towards professional careers. Artists in such diverse disciplines as illustration, comic, or graphic novel art, game art design, and animation must master a lot of skills in character designing.

Character design has been greatly influenced by the appearance of computer technology. Artists use several of complex and dynamic software programs to create animations, but they still need the command of certain basic techniques to succeed. Character design has been partially absorbed by new technological paradigm and many younger artists rely too heavily on the software packages when they face design difficulties.

‘Libraries’ of images have been created for general uses and need to ‘tweak’ to produce a character design. Online character design, game development, and competition have taken advantage of these new resources to give anyone to construct simple characters that operate in a game context.

Character Design also influences in this country too. Asian, especially Japanese, culture has produce several styles of animations (most particular is anime) that have attracted younger audience in the United States and Europe. Other cultures will likely continue to blend with the mainstream of style in character design for years to come up with new and unusual ideas.

It will take strong will and steadfastness in the face of all of this change to produce the great character of the future.