Character Design Lesson 2

This week in our character design class we were introduced to how different shapes portray different characteristics. The main shapes are circles, squares and triangles.

Circles- Circles give the illusion of softness, gentle and soft. They also represent baby and young features as in real life that is what we'd associate the shape to. A good example of such a soft and round character drawn with circles is Whinnie the Pooh.



Squares are used to represent strength and muscle.



Superman is a good example in how squares portray strength. His chest, shoulders and wait all have a square like appearance.

The last shape is a triangle. Triangles are sharp and the total opposite to circles. They portray evil and danger. This is because in real life we'd associate them to sharp objects. Jafar from Aladdin is drawn using triangles. His shoulders, staff and lower torso all have some replica of the shape, giving him his evil appearance.



We were then shown how a mixture of shapes define a character's personality. The best example of this is of the gentle giant, Obelix from Asterix. His upper half is drawn using squares to represent strength and the lower half is drawn using circles. Therefore he appears as a strong, yet gentle giant.



Having learnt the uses of these shaopes we were then asked to create an evil minion for the bad guy.