ChrisOatley.com

Disney Character Designer answers your questions about Concept Art, Character Design for Animation, Digital Painting & Illustration.

Creative Character Design for Animation, Games and Comics

Character design for Tyler 'The Big Top' Triceratops from my comic 'Greg The Megabeaver's Prehistoric Sideshow' For over ten years, I've been reviewing character design portfolios online, at comic cons and art school Q&A sessions.

In that time, I've met many artists with charming personalities and impressive technical skills.

…but a true Character Designer is extremely hard to find.

True Character Designers get consistent work.

True Character Designers sell lots of books and prints at cons.

…and some of them create characters who will outlive us all.

Here are some of my favorite articles and interviews that will help you transcend the trends and begin to create characters with soul...

Five Tips To Make Your Character Designs More Dynamic & Believable :: PWP #9

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How can character design strengthen the emotional impact of your story?

Are turnarounds really a waste of time?

How can you avoid cliches in your designs, and make your characters both surprising and memorable?

In this episode of The Paper Wings Podcast, Chris and Lora give you FIVE tips that will help you make your characters more dynamic and believable.

Press PLAY, and get ready to learn how to set your characters apart, and take your stories to the next level!

READ ON to DOWNLOAD our FREE Character Design Cheat Sheet to learn how YOU can enter to WIN a WACOM Intuos4 Tablet and to download the episode Cheat Sheet!

[Read more…] about Five Tips To Make Your Character Designs More Dynamic & Believable :: PWP #9

Ten Questions To Ask Your Characters To Make Them More Dynamic & Believable :: PWP #8

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Riddler-Batman-TV-Classic-254x300Do you struggle to write good dialogue for your characters?  Are your characters flat and boring?

Do you avoid the writing process and race to the drawing stage when making your comics or cartoons?

What if your writing process could improve your character designs?

In this episode of The Paper Wings Podcast, Chris and Lora give you TEN questions that will help you bring your characters to life right on the page.

They also share the submission deadline and judging process for the first Paper Wings Challenge sponsored by WACOM Technologies!

This episode features examples from Batman, X-Men, Romeo & Juliet, The Big Lebowski, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, LOST, The Godfather, Driving Miss Daisy and The Office.

Press PLAY, dig deep with your characters and let the design and dialogue flow!

READ ON to learn how YOU can enter to WIN a WACOM Intuos4 Tablet and to download the episode Cheat Sheet!

[Read more…] about Ten Questions To Ask Your Characters To Make Them More Dynamic & Believable :: PWP #8

Alien Janitor: Process Tutorial (part 1) :: ArtCast #13

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Click Here to watch Part Two of this series.

This video was recorded in April of 2009.

The ‘News’ announcements are outdated. The quality of the art, the video and the audio aren’t as strong as my more recent but I believe that the content is still worthwhile.

In This Video ::

I recently had the tremendous honor of joining my friends Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble as a guest on their awesome podcast Big Illustration Party Time.

It is an amazing resource for anyone interested in freelance illustration.

The topic that we discussed was character design so each of us did a ‘homework assignment’ before the episode where we had to design a “hero.”

I came up with an alien janitor in cut-offs.

I did a screen capture of the entire painting and I have split that video into two parts.  The first part, this episode, will be accompanied by a series of audio clips from my guest appearance on Big Illustration Party Time.

In Part Two, I will go into further detail via voiceover about the process of creating and finishing this painting.

Check out my collection of Digital Painting Tutorials for Concept Artists & Illustrators!