Animation Fundamentals/ Project 1A
19 /05/25 - 02/ 06 /25 ( Week 5- Week 7)
- A line of action is an imaginary line running through the body that shows the direction and energy of a pose. A strong line makes the pose clearer, more unified, and full of life.
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Negative space is the empty area around your character that lets the pose breathe. Having different-sized gaps between arms and legs makes the pose feel lively and more appealing.
- Think drawing like a sculpture: give it weight, volume, and depth so it feels real and solid.
- Avoid making both sides of your character's body do exactly the same thing( it looks stiff and boring)
- Add natural shifts and twists in the body to create relaxed, dynamic, and interesting poses.
Break down complex poses into simple shapes like spheres and boxes to build a solid foundation.
Use “bean” shapes to show the tilt between chest and hips, and “robo bean” to think about body structure in 3D.
- Make sure your character feels grounded — show which parts carry weight and keep everything balanced.
- means a drawing or character is visually charming and engaging.
makes the audience want to watch and understand easily.
It’s not just about being cute; heroes, villains, and even ugly characters can have appeal.
Good appeal includes:
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Charm
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Clear, simple design
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Strong presence
Weak drawings lack appeal when they are:
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Confusing or hard to read
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Poorly designed
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Clumsy or awkward in shape and movement
Audiences love:
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Expressive faces
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Unique characters
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Dynamic movements
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Interesting story moments
- Set the character description ( Age, Gender, Weight, Attitude, Personality) and design a character based on the information.
- Goal: create a character design that reflect his/ her personality in the story and be visually appealing to the targeted audience.
- You can take any references from the existing character like movie, anime or comic.
Study design elements (shape language, proportion, silhouette, line of action, colour) and record reflections in your e-portfolio.
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Create an original character design different from your references.
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Deliverables:
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Turnaround sheet (front, side, back, ¾ view)
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Pose sheet (5 full-body action poses)
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Facial expressions (5 expressions: happy, sad, angry, fear, surprise; focus on face only)
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Upload progress and final work to your e-portfolio and update the submission link on MYTIMES.
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Deadline: June 2, 2025 (Week 7, next class).
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For a beginner like me, references are very important. I went to Pinterest to search for ideas that would help me create my character.
- Before beginning character design, I need to establish a clear character description to guide the drawing process
- To simplify the character design process, I first establish a basic character framework.
I use Adobe Illustrator for drawing, and I’ve realized that character illustration isn’t easy—especially drawing the 3/4 view. I find it really hard and challenging.
- Drawing the back view with the brush tool is quite tricky. Towards the end, I continuously refined the character’s posture.
- Next, I need to come up with five poses—not just the physical stance, but ones that also express the character's personality. Since I don’t have much experience with this, I searched on Pinterest for suitable poses that match my character’s traits.
- The first pose shows the character sitting, intended to convey a sense of daydreaming or deep thought. I began by using basic shapes like ellipses and rectangles to build the character's structure, then created a new layer to draw the full figure.
The second pose shows the character jumping with joy, meant to express her cheerful and lively personality. I spent quite some time adjusting her body movements to make the pose look more natural and dynamic.
- The third pose shows the character sitting on a sofa, taking a break. The goal was to convey a relaxed and casual mood. I paid attention to the positioning of her limbs and posture to make the scene feel comfortable and natural.
- The fourth pose shows the character standing with a confused expression, mainly to highlight her forgetful and often absent-minded personality. The fifth pose depicts her in a walking motion, capturing a natural moment of her everyday movement.
- This character’s main colors are red, yellow, and dark blue. Red shows her passionate and energetic side, yellow is bright and sunny like her cheerful personality, and dark blue makes her look calm and a bit reserved. Together, these colors reflect her many sides!
- To really nail the character’s expressions for happy, sad, angry, fear, and surprise, I looked up a bunch of references online to help me capture the details and emotions better.
- Compared to character design and pose sheet design, facial expressions are the least challenging part for me. Since I watch a lot of animation, I’ve developed a certain level of understanding and familiarity with facial expressions.
- With every facial expression I draw, I discover more about the nuances of emotion and how to express them visually.
- After finishing the facial expressions, I kept looking back to see what could be improved. This process helped me understand more about how expressions convey emotions, and it also made me more confident with handling the details.
As a beginner in drawing, this project has been the most challenging one I’ve faced so far. From character design to pose sheets and facial expressions, each part required a lot of time and effort. Especially with limited time and many tasks, it was stressful to keep the quality high.
Through this practice, I learned a lot about the relationship between character structure and movement, and how facial expressions show emotions with small details. I also understood how to adjust poses and proportions during the design and drawing process.
I know my work is not perfect, but this assignment helped me improve my digital drawing skills a lot, since before this I could hardly draw at all. It also taught me better ways to observe and correct my work, which will help me in future learning.
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