Intro to Character Design
This short course is an introduction to learning the basics of creating characters, and drawing digitally. You will learn different types of drawing and rendering techniques that you can use to create compelling character designs. This course is aimed at beginner to intermediate artists and will give you the perfect foundation for your art career.
A Character Designer creates the look and feel of characters for video games, film, animation and illustrations. Strong drawing skills and the fundamentals are required to create any type of realistic or stylised characters.
At CDW Studios many of the workshops use the principles taught in character design. This includes perspective, anatomy, drawing construction, drawing simple forms in 3D space, colour, design principles, storytelling and drawing in Photoshop.
This 12 week online course runs concurrently with Flinders University semesters. Including the two-week mid-semester break, it runs for 14 weeks in total. The course will consist of:
- 12 weekly pre-recorded lectures & demonstrations that will guide you step by step through your projects
- 6 assignments over the course of 12 weeks (one submitted each fortnight, prior to feedback session)
- Live fortnightly 3hr feedback webinars where you will receive feedback on your progress. (see below)
Topics covered over the 12 week course include:
- Construction & drawing forms
- Drawing poses, faces & hands
- Communicating feeling through gesture
- Shape design & style
- Archetypes
- Basic rendering with colour to create a finished character
Tuition Price: $950 AUD.
Hardware requirements for the course are:
- Laptop or Desktop PC or MAC (MacBook Pro or i7 PC/laptop with 16GB RAM are recommended).
- Wacom tablet is recommended not required. Any size is good.
- Headset/Microphone so that you can chat with the instructor in fortnightly webinars.
- Notepad and pens/pencils for note-taking.
Software requirements:
- Adobe Photoshop
*As part of the course you have the option to participate in Live Streamed Feedback Sessions. These are live feedback webinars with your industry instructor will provide you with direct feedback on your work. If you can't attend the session via webcam when it's live, you will still be able to watch the recorded sessions in your own time. Times listed are ACST (UTC +9:30).
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU SIGN UP?
Once you sign up you will receive:
- A receipt email from Flinders Online Payments for the course.
- An online short course confirmation email from [email protected]flinders.edu.au, informing you that your registration has been received.
- An email from [email protected]flinders.edu.au asking you to set up your authentification name (FAN) and password for the FLO site, which is the computer system used for online learning. You will need to follow the instructions carefully to activate your account.
You will be granted access to the FLO site within 2 hours of activating your FAN, after which you’ll be able to view the FLO dashboard and your course.
All tutorials and exercises will be visible from the first day of the first week.
Instructor Bio: Rebecca Oborn
Concept artist and illustrator based in Brisbane, Australia. Specialist experience in creating art for board and video games. Companies she has worked with include Gameloft, Defiant Development, and CDW Studios. Rebecca is currently working at League of Geeks, focusing on 2D and Character Design.
Student Work
Showcasing some work by previous students. There is no prerequisite to take our online short courses, and there can be a variety of skill level among our students. Our goal is to help them create some solid pieces for their portfolio.
