Create your own character design!

We will do a couple warm-up exercises as we go through the class lessons and before starting our final class project. Prompts, references and additional material can be found here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/karla_alcazar/illustrating-people-skillshare/

First warm-up exercise: Observation

Pick one of the images from the Pinterest board named “Observation”. You can pick whichever person you find more interesting without giving it too much thought; simply pick the one that catches your eye more.
Now quickly answer the following questions:
- What was the first thing you noticed about the person? (clothes, hairstyle, pose, overall mood?). Remember this as it will be key when sketching our character.
- What was the second thing you liked or noticed about the person? This will be our supporting element to draw our character. You can pick one more element if you like.
We will be sketching (roughly) our character based on the characteristics we noticed more, emphasizing the key elements that we noticed first. Once we have that outline, we can proceed to give this character a story.

Second exercise: Narrative

Pick one of the quotes from the board named “Narrative” and quickly answer to the following questions:
- What emotion comes to your mind while reading it?. This will be our key element to create our narrative.
- You don’t have to answer this publicly but ask yourself why did you choose that particular quote. Does it remind you of a personal experience?. Now, this is the secret key element to tell our narrative, because this isn’t just an emotion, it’s a specific emotion that you know well and you’ll be able to share it more confidently.

FINAL CLASS PROJECT

Pick one of the images from the folder “Location”. As we have done it previously, just pick the one that catches your eye without giving it too much thought.
We will now use our character sketch, our short narrative and the location we have picked to create a final illustration.
We will add a couple of additional elements to our character based on the points discussed in one of the lessons and we will use the narrative created to support our choices. In case reference images are needed, I will be providing a board named “Reference”.
In order to keep it simple, we will create one final illustration, but however is up for a challenge is welcome to create up to three panels. The short story and illustration will be uploaded to the project gallery. Students will be encouraged to share their process on social media as well.

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Elisa Fabbian

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