Character Design Class with Charles Zembillas and the Animation Academy

I started classes with The Animation Academy last Tuesday and I'm really happy with the progress I made in one little session. My instructor was Charles Zembillas, who's a character designer and concept artist for many well-known video games and Saturday Morning cartoons. Check out his blog if you get a chance.

The school is located in an office building near downtown Burbank. I went to the evening Character Design 1 class, and there was plenty of parking nearby. Charles was very welcoming, he kept the, conversation entertaining with discussions of Bigfoot, the animation industry, and mythology. There were five other students in the class. The classroom itself had all sorts of neat cartoon art of varying styles and lots of professional animation equipment.

My first class focused on the principle of Dominant Mass and I was to only focus on character heads and keep the character simple (i.e.: cartoony rather than realistic). The principle starts with the different parts of the head having more volume than the rest. The example given used the jaw and cranium and was later expanded on from there. I don't want to give too much away because it's a really good class and one should experience it for oneself.

What I was most happy with was how fast I was able to crank out drawings. The simplicity of the lesson made for some really nice looking characters with minimal effort on my part. This was maybe more of a psychological hurdle to overcome because perhaps I would focus to much on details and minutia rather than shape and composition. Focusing on creating shapes with volume in the right places is quick and easy and once that step is done, it seems like a lot of the composition is done. To the left are my drawings from the classroom lesson. I was told the one on the left wasn't cartoony enough. After that, I forgot that part of the assignment was to not obstruct the character with objects that cover the character (like the hat in the one on the right). Finally, the one on the bottom was one I that made everyone happy.

The homework was to create several more of those compositions and try to make a unifying theme. I started with the theme of a cartoony version of Deathworld characters. Note that all of the following pictures are in the order in which they were drawn to show progress.



After realizing I couldn't really convey the setting and genre of Deathworld using just heads and faces, I decided to switch to Universal monsters as my unifying theme.

Dracula

Frankenstein's Monster

Wolfman

Creature from the Black Lagoon

I was really happy with the way the Creature from the Black Lagoon turned out. It was fun to work with something that had an unusual look and fun exaggerating shapes like the brow and earlobes. The Frankenstein Monster was also fun because I paired a huge head with a small face. Frank was also one of the most simple characters I've drawn in my life. It was neat to see something so simple convey so much character. I was least happy with Wolf-Man. I'm not happy with the way the tongue sticks out. It doesn't look like it's attached to the character enough. It looks like a piece of meat balanced on the dog's lip. I also wasn't able to evoke the idiotic, enthusiastic emotion I wanted in the characters face. That's what's nice about having an instructor though; I can go back and ask what I'm doing wrong. Based on my previous interactions with this instructor, I'm sure the advice will stick too.