To attract attention and arouse customers’ purchasing desire, character design is foremost thing of the anime production.
Nucleus of character design:
Just view the world as it appears in a distorting mirror with every character being alive. Don’t confine yourself with any limit or frame, just give full play to your imagination and let the story unfold freely and lead you wherever it goes. The story itself is the soul. You should marry the story with an attractive appearance and with this the story becomes alive….
The distinctive features of anime drama make this form the best way to portray characters.
The uniqueness of anime and illustration characters:
Character modeling is delicately designed by the creator. It does not necessarily have the appearance of a human being and it can go much beyond it. The modeling can be closely related with the personalities of the characters and the story plots. Through exaggeration and imagination, the anime characters will have more distinctive features. Without confinements of reality, creators can make full use of their imagination in creation of anime characters. Thus, the anime characters, more often than not, possess superhuman “magic powers”. With this design, the anime characters can impress people more deeply than ordinary characters.
In some short films of artistic creation, the characters are portrayed as icons with specific meaning to reflect the theme or some sentiment or emotion. The characters in commercial anime production have the same dramatic features and creation procedures.
First, characterization in anime should respect the common features of characterization as observed in common film or drama making: vividness and representativeness of characters. The length limit of dramas demands that one or a set of characters threads through dramas, serving as axes with the climax and main theme revolving around them. Of course, they also have their own features.
The only difference between characters in anime and illustration is that the illustration is result of the freeze-framing of splendid moments in the anime, or put it another way, is an excellent “photographer”.
NO.1 Shining hero
Disney’s Frog Prince
Exclusiveness of the hero makes the center of the dramatic conflict. In reviewing his creation career, Disney concludes that the anime needs a strong and appealing main character. This can be realized by naming of the anime, making the fate of the main character and the plot development being closely bound as an organic whole. Thus, the film concentrates on the main character and makes it more prominent. So, in designing the dramatic plot, the first thing to do is to determine which character will serve as the main character. The conflict, plot and atmosphere should all be developing around the character. To be specific, the main character should take much more time of the drama than others. Second and more important, the main character should take the main position in the drama. It serves as the most important and most powerful driving force pushing for development of the plot. The conflict starts with him, develops with him and ends with him.
NO. 2 Personalities of anime characters
Manuscript of WALL·E
Unique personalities of anime characters: typed personalities and childlike innocence. The typed characters have two features. First, their personalities are strong and clear. We tend to generalize their personalities with one or two words for viewers to grasp easily. Second, compared with main characters in reality, the typed characters are ones which are created with elaboration and exaggeration. They are enriched by more vivid details and therefore are more distinctive. Then how to create typed characters: character positioning: the idea of sensible and general character positioning is of great influence to the image of anime characters, and even of decisive influence to the animated film as a whole. Elaboration, exaggeration and even extremalization of “original characters”. The characters, treated this way, will become more distinctive, a feature required by all anime characters. (Exaggeration and imagination are the soul of animation.) The most important element is to inject more details in the direction of individualization of characters. Finally, let’s talk about the differences in character design in highlighting distinctive features of characters.
NO.3 Arm characters with a pair of wings of imagination
Manuscript of WALL·E
First, the overall design of the film should be a product of imagination in order to create a freshly imaginative world to attract audience. Second, characters should be endowed with animated features, i.e., sort of supernatural power. As Disney noted, “imagination and exaggeration” are the soul of animation. Characters in the film, or anime characters, should embody both of them.
Jared: You can only advance with an insatiable desire for improvement. The moment you feel your works are excellent and satisfied with yourself is just the starting point of your failure! So you should never cease to learn and by doing this make yourself stronger!
Weili Peopeo
