Teacher Stories: Denis Zilber

Meet Denis Zilber, who teaches a highly rated Introduction to Cartoon Character Design class on Skillshare. Denis is an illustrator specializing in character development and design, and shares with you his best illustration tips and processes for developing your own technique!

My name is Denis Zilber and I am a freelance illustrator and character designer from Tel-Aviv, Israel. I do illustration for newspapers and magazines, advertising agencies, game studios as well as character design for animation projects. I also have some experience as an animator and it greatly effects my work.

Many people ask me how do I do certain things and I used to reply to them personally but it takes so much time, which I simply don’t have. So I decided to summarize all the knowledge I have and share it with all those who might be interested in it. In my class, I try to show my working process exactly as it happens every day and provide an explanation to each and every step I take. It's basically 100% my own way to do things.

My favorite elements of the class experience is seeing how people react to my feedback. Everyone was very positive and grateful. I also loved to see how some students took the assignment so seriously that they changed, fixed, recreated their work from the scratch, researched the subject profoundly. It’s a very nice feeling when you see your students work hard because they love your class and love studying.

The most important discovery for me as a teacher few years ago was that things I consider obvious are not that obvious for my students. Assignments that I give to might students might look very easy for me but they might be almost impossible from my students. So I believe that it is always good to keep everything as simple as possible, moving in small steps rather than giant leaps.