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Course: Storytelling > Unit 1
Lesson 4: Lesson 3: Bringing characters to life- Introduction to character design
- Character types
- Exercise 1: Who is your character?
- Costumes
- Exercise 2: Costumes
- Character sheets
- Exercise 3: Character Sheet
- Armatures
- Exercise 4: Prototype armature
- Actuators
- Exercise 5: Digital armatures
- Controlling an animatronic character
- Exercise 6: Control
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Exercise 1: Who is your character?
Getting to know your character inside and out.
Exercise 1: Who is your character?
Throughout the exercises in this lesson your job is to dream up and design an animatronic character for a land or attraction of your own design.
Activity: It’s important to get to know who your character is on the inside in order to better understand how they will look and act on the outside. Here are some brainstorming questions to get you started.
- What is your characters name?
- Where does your character live?
- Is your character from the past, present or future?
- What does your character want or need?
- What does your character fear or dislike?
- What does your character eat for breakfast, how do they eat it?
Activity 2: Create a very rough sketch of your character to get a sense of their shape and size. Feel free to use any materials to create this sketch whether it’s by hand or on the computer. Do this quickly and don’t worry about making it look beautiful.
Want to join the conversation?
Yuki Miura and Sakura Asuka. Yuki is human so he's from tokyo. Sakura is a siren and she lives in the Tokyo bay, a bay off the Pacific ocean.
The characters are contemporary.
My characters want...no, need each other. Literally. Because without each other, they're gonna be the most miserable creatures on earth.
Both my characters fear losing each other. Without Yuki's love, Sakura is gonna die. Sirens are supposed to find their lovers (which, by the way, are human) or else their hearts turn to stone and u know what happens. And without Sakura, Yuki is gonna go berserk, become antisocial and may never find happiness in his life.
Sakura hates loud noises, bright lights, pineapples, bananas, waking up early, sitting in cars, fighting, et cetera.
Yuki hates waking up early, working, cleaning after himself, and the usual things teenage boys hate.
Sakura love pancakes with syrup and warm milk for breakfast and when she eats that, she licks the syrup off before she proceeds to nibble the pancake. She usually adds a side dish of fruits.
Yuki loves honeyed cereal and lukewarm milk. He doesn't mix the milk with the cereal but spoons some cereal into his mouth first, then adds the milk to that.
Their idea of a good breakfast has to have milk somewhere in there, why? I don't know.
What do y'all think?(15 votes)
My character is named bob, He lives anywhere and everywhere, He is from the past, present, and future, my dude wants to rule the world, My dude hates humans, they eat humans, he uses his mouth to eat them.(8 votes)
Bob sounds like a very bright person(alien?). I wish him all the best human hunting. He'll be a huge help to over population too.(7 votes)
My character is Wolfy, she is a wolf animatronic that prowls at night and tries to avoid the diffrent gaurds that try to take down her Pizziaria. she lives in her pizzaria Wolfy And Friends. In technicality she lives in the past. She wants to let her soul rest, as a kid she grew up wanting to live a stronger life, instead of dieing because of her heart cancer. her father made a pizziaria and the animatronic wolfy, one day she trys to find a way to stop her upcomeing death and gets into the suit of wolfy but aceadently sets off the locks and dies in the suit. she then becomes imortal and glives her friends (the other animatronics) imortality. but one night a man that plans to hurt her dad comes to the place. she eats pizza and toast(6 votes)- My character name is zoltar. He is an electronic dude who looks cool and loves electricity. It can't talk and loves to dance.(4 votes)
- My character is the head of all of odd squad. I do not know what she eats for breakfast. Should I make it up?(2 votes)
base it off of her personality. If she is bubbly then maybe pancakes, if she's generic then maybe cherrios and so on. :)(1 vote)
- My character is Luxo Jr. (My land is a Pixar shorts land)(4 votes)
- Sorry guys, forgot to post my character.
So my character is Mira Lin, a fun-loving 14 yr old. She is actually the reincarnation of Phoenix, one of the moat powerful fire spirts that has ever lived. She has long, obsidian hair with green eyes that are a different tint/shade with every different angle. She is crazy for coconuts(bc coconuts are awesum) and mashed potatos. Her abilities include - Pryokinesis, Mersmer, Geokinesis, Umberkinesis(Shadow Manipulation), Electrokinesis, Toxikinesis, vitakinesis, absoration, Chronokinesis, and Audiokinesis and has a photographic memory. She has twin, Alex Lin who is the renicarnation of Dragon. She hates having to sleep late or wake up early. She likes to go out camping bc she is amazing at survival. She also really hates most pop music, rock music, bc she just cant stand the loud noises. She instead prefers Classical music. Like if i wrote this well!
ps. if you have any questions about Mira(or Alex) then i'll answer them in the comments below.(4 votes) - My character's name is Lily. She is the gardener in my land, Flower land. She is from present. She eats vegetables and she eats it with her mouth. She fears too much sun for the flowers. She wants to take care of the flowers.(4 votes)
1.Oogie Boogie! (I'm making a Nightmare before Christmas themed land, as you could probably tell)
2.Halloween town, of course!
3.I don't know, :/
4.Again, I don't know
5.Idk
6.Still don't know
Idk a lot about Oogie Boogie :'D(3 votes)- Maybe present? more halloween? Every other Holiday? Bones? With his/her mouth (Like, Duh.)?(2 votes)
my characters name is Neilie ,who is a joyful dragon who helps kid get good grades(3 votes)