I love how being daring is of your philosophy, it gives me hope for the future of animation to know that there are people like you making beautiful art.
Sergio....geez. You are my favorite kind of artist. No fluff or pretense. Just simple concepts + hard work and determination. Although I have to admit, watching you draw feels like magic. Thank you for sharing. I can't wait to see what SPA does next. Klaus was jaw-dropping and equally as magical as your art.
sort of subtitles Hi. I’m Sergio Pablos. And I’ve been working in animation for already 25 years and in that time I had to wear many many hats. I had to be a director, an animator and a character designer occasionally. And I do enjoy character design especially. So today I’m here to tell you about 8 tips, things that I’ve learned over the years that you could find useful. 8 tips about how to become a better character designer. №1. Know your subject matter. So if you got an assignment or a great idea and you can’t wait to dive into it, right? You wanna start drawing. Well, hold on just a second. Are you familiar with the subject matter? Have you researched what you supposed to be designing? Personally, I feel that this is a very necessary step and it really shows when an artist neglects it. Let me give you an example. When I was approached to design the main bird characters in Rio, my knowledge of birds was nowhere close to where they needed to be for me to take on this challenge. Don’t get me wrong, I could draw a somewhat convincing bird, I had a working knowledge of their anatomy and their mechanics. But not all birds are the same and I had a lot to learn. Give this a try. Put in the time to learn about your subject and you’ll see what it does for the quality of your designs. №2. Get through the bad drawings before you get to the good ones. No matter how you put it, character design is a process of elimination. Your first try isn’t going to be the good one, or the second, or the third. It takes time to get yourself accustomed to the subject matter. Trying out different shapes, and styles, and different ways to achieve the right attitude to your characters. Don’t rush, persevere. I promise you, if you do this, you’ll look back at your first attempts and you won’t even believe at one point you thought your first tries were good. Now you’ll be embarrassed to even show them. Be patient and it will pay off, you’ll see. №3. Character. A character is a tool used to tell a story, as simple as that. If you are working on a film, or a TV show as a designer, the director or the art director will come to you and describe the character that he needs you to design. The description has two parts: the physical attributes of the character: gender, age, occupation, attire and such. Then, for the second part, the psychological attributes: backstory, character arc, motivation, personality traits, that sort of thing. Often times I see young designers neglecting the second part in favor of the first one. They are more concerned about how cool it looks than about whether the character will fill the needs of the story. Back in a day, I designed and supervised the animation on Tantor the elephant on Disney’s Tarzan. The director gave me a description of the character so I could begin exploring the design. For the sake of simplicity let’s boil it down to this: Tantor is a neurotic elephant. «Elephant» - is, clearly, a physical part, which makes «neurotic» - a psychological trait. So I did o lot of designs of Tantor, some of which actually I was far more excited about than the one we ended up using. But I quickly found that the cooler designs were not displaying the personality in any discernible way: they were just cool elephant drawings. But not any elephant in particular, just appealing shapes of elephants void of any character. And then I did this drawing that was something different. I tried to approach it from the character point of view. I noticed that whenever I acted out my idea of neurotic, I adopted this posture. I sank my head into my shoulders and I looked around nervously. So I tried altering the design to be able to do that. It’s actually quite a departure from an elephant anatomy because they are not able to do that, their heads hang down like this. They cannot do this. But the moment the director saw that sketch the reaction was immediate. That’s him, that’s Tantor. So take my word for it. If you approach it from the character point of view, you’ll get better results every single time, which brings us to… №4. Getting the personality in there. One thing that has always surprised me about designing characters is how much power there is in putting the right attitude into your drawings. You may be tempted to place your characters in fairly standard poses. And that may be true for you as the artist but when it comes down to showing your work, attitude trumps everything. I was shocked to find that oftentimes the directors would pick a weaker design and disregard the ones that I thought were brilliant. Why? Well, simply because those designs were placing a pose that displayed the right attitude for the character’s personality. Trust me, if you are leaning towards one of your designs and you are hoping that it’s the one that gets picked, give him or her the most expressive attitude, the one that conveys the personality in the most appealing way. №5. Get feedback. So here’s a test I like to do just to check if I am going in the right direction. Say my assignment was this: we need you to design a mischievous yet somewhat cute monster, can’t be scary for children but it still needs to be recognizable as a monster. Go. So what I would do is this: after I've done some work I’d find someone and I would show them my work. By the way, this person doesn’t need to be an artist. As a matter of fact, it’s better if they’re not, in my opinion. But, and this is very important, I would not give them any information. All that I would say is: what do you see here? And if the response I get falls along the lines of the assignment that I was given, then we are on the right track. But if they don’t get it, if they cannot describe the character to me back in the way that the assignment was given to me, then I need to try a different approach. №6. Be adaptable. So there are some designers out there that have a very distinctive style, often so appealing and unique, that that’s the main reason they are so sought after. You know that kind of artists I’m referring to. I’m afraid I don’t fit into that category, I’m more of a trial-error kind of guy. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll have our own style but personally, I try to stay open to as many influences as possible, so my designs don’t become repetitive and stale. Plus, I’ve learned that I need to adapt the way I work to the kind of assignment and director I’m working with. Sometimes you’ll be working with a director that has an artistic background and he’s probably going to be the kind of guy who can show rough sketches to you and you’ll get it. All the times the person you’re working for lacks the ability to extrapolate a sketch into anything other than the sketch. In those cases, I found that I need to do a bit of extra work. Maybe render a character in a more volumetric or try different styles, maybe more realistic, maybe more cartoony. A bit of texture here, some volume there. In other words, it falls to you as the artist to bridge that gap and adopt to your director’s needs, not the other way around. №7. Stay inspired. Keep in mind that when I was trying to break into an animation it was a very different world. There was no internet, so if you wanted to find inspiration, you had a much harder time doing so. Usually, it involved digging through piles of books in some dusty comic book store, hoping to run into a rare illusion of life or blessed on rare animation book. And when you did find one of those, it was something to be a treasure for life. But look what you have at your disposal today! Pinterest, RU-vid, endless list of websites and blogs, dedicated to the most specialized nooks and crannies of anything you can come up with. And it’s all for free. For someone like me, it’s absolutely insane. So my advice to you is to take full advantage of this wonderful time we live in. Stay inspired and it will show in your work. №8. Challenge yourself. Lastly, I want to leave you with this: you don’t learn anything new if you always stay in your comfort zone. It’s only when we challenge ourselves and when we take a dive into the unknown when we really advance. Not only will you learn something new, but you get the satisfaction of facing your fears and limitations and overcoming them. And by the way, if you persevere, if you don’t turn away from the challenge, you will most definitely overcome them. Practice makes perfect. It really does. Well, there you go. I hope that was helpful. And if it was and if you’d like to see more of these videos, you know the drill: like, subscribe, comment, that sort of thing.
muchas gracias, senor!! My Animation2 professor told my class about this channel and I immediately recognized the animator of Tantor from Tarzan!! I was so happy!!!
Those were awesome tips, I really needed to hear that. And I love your style. I just watched Klaus and it made me cry multiple times because of how beautiful it was, thank you!
You guys are amazing for sharing all this valuable info and behind the scenes content. Stuff like this would be non-existent, even to purchase when I was young, and the next generation are getting it for free. You're doing the industry a massive service here, fair play!
I really liked this video Sergio... I would love to see more tips on how you design the male and female in all ages and shapes. And then maybe go into more detail like eyes, nose, ears, hair, feathers, hands, different animals, clothing, arms legs, feet.... There are so many things you could do.
This REALLY helped. I've always been one of the artists who focus more on the appearance of a design instead of the actual character. But I didn't even realize that till now! Also, the last point really hit home. Been having a hard time with being inspired. 😁 Thank you!!
You have an awesome style that I find hilarious! The poses and facial expressions convey the personalities so very well. Humorous illustration and caricature drawings are my favorite thing to do, and I learned a lot from this video. A BIG thanks to you for posting!
the feedback part is so helpful! sometimes i get so drowned in my own work i often become numb of what i wanted to convey in my character in the first place. definitely helps when you ask your family members to criticize your character. thanks so much!
Thank you very much. I'm in great admiration for the work by all the artists at SPA Studio, and in love with Klaus! Congratulations and great to hear the Director talk.
This video helps so much. I’ve loved animation ever since I was a kid and I’m currently studying character design and have a RU-vid where I create animations. I’ll be sure to use these tips for my future animations :)
These points were really eye opening for me. I've always wanted to dig more into character design because I find it always very interesting as a process, and these points helped me learn to adapt and challenge myself which is something I need to work on more. Thank you Sergio Pablos and SPA Studios for this helpful video!
Thank You Sergio !!! You people have really gerat videos about animation and character design which inspires young animators, ı get really inspired and ı will remember those tips while i draw. Thankss a lot guys !!
Lo intentaremos. Es difícil encontrar el tiempo para hacer todo lo que quisiéramos, pero si la respuesta a este vídeo es sonora, lo tomaremos como una señal de que hay que hacer otros.
I do my own work and must improve a lot. Good lessons though. However, if you are doing your own work for good intentions, challenge yourself more and don't play it too safe because of the focus group and forced kiddy garbage we are exposed to now. Been enjoying Klaus and that was awesome.
Perfect statements! Thanks for your time to make this movie. I passed it to my students who love to get into character development and animation. Congrats for the well deserved Oscar nomination. ;-)
Wow! How much you have achieved! Every day I think that one day my dream will come true and I will be engaged in the field of animation! Every day I do something for this! (I don’t know why I am writing this, but I just can’t be silent))
Wonderful and inspiring video, thank you very much. Es el tipo de cosas que me alejan un poco del día a día y me recuerdan lo mucho que me emociona esta carrera y este arte
