We had a lecture from Sorcha Cartoons, which I found was very helpful. She was able to explain how to break down character designs to fundamental shapes such as circles, squares and triangles and how this is helpful when beginning to design a character. By breaking everything down this way you’ll be able to create a character which will then be easier for a team to bring to animation from your sketches.

She got us to try an excercise of our own, where we designed some characters using the simple shapes.

I struggled a little with this at first, as I am still not used to creating characters from basic shapes. I found it difficult to find the balance of using the shapes e.g. triangle but not making everything in the design triangular. The square design characters also fell a little flat and 2 dimensional which I wasn’t happy with. I think I will need to experiment more with these basic shapes to become more comfortable with building characters from the ground up so to speak. The more circular shapes I feel worked a little better, and I was able to get some personality into the designs.

I think overall I need to think differently about initial sketches, and how they don’t have to be perfect- they can be something which is built upon and in fact they should be.

https://www.sorchacartoons.com/