Telling Tales: Lecture on Character and Short Story Design

On Monday I attended a lecture given by Sara Barbas on Character and Short Story design, which I found to be very interesting. She told us some of the key elements when it comes to character design and things we should consider when we designing ourselves.

The first point Sara raised was to write/study the story, as the character should always serve the story. In order to do this, research and references maybe necessary to ensure a successful design. Not only this, but life drawing is very important as it allows you to study movement more accurately which is just one of the things we need to consider when we design a character. The other three main considerations are target audience, final platform and genre.

When designing characters we were also instructed to consider the "core shape" of our design, as different shapes can often represent different characteristics or personalities, with the three main shapes being squares, circles and triangles.  Circles tends to be associated with being quite friendly and cuddly, where as squares are seen to be more masculine and strong. Angular characters can often be seen as threatening, or feminine if the angles are more curvy, but if the character is made up of a mix of different core shapes this could mean that the character is more complex.

Circle Characters

Square Characters

Angular Characters

Mixed Characters

I was also reminded that asymmetry can help to give a character more life. When a character is drawn perfectly symmetrical it can make them seem more "wooden", which is something I'm very guilty of when it comes to character design, especially when I don't necessarily draw the character in a pose. I tried to bare this in mind - as well as all of the other points that were mentioned in the lecture - when I continued to work on the designs for my current project. I found that it definitely helped/improved my drawings when I wasn't focusing on making the character perfect in terms of giving it life, so I shall have to continue to try and work with this mind set.

We also ran through the key elements of a short story, and to summarise these were;

- Short story should be predominantly character driven. Make sure to introduce the characters straight away.

- The urgent goal or plot needs to be introduced quick. There isn't much time for background story or character development.

- 'Tools' that work well are to play with conventions, props & setting, sound design and a story twist, loop or gag of some kind. 

- You don't have to "spoon feed" the audience, meaning you are allowed to leave room for the viewers own interpretation.

Example Short - Oktapodi 

I found that these pointers were really useful, and I hadn't thought about short stories this way before. It only really became apparently to me just how much these tools and guidelines were used when we were shown a couple of example shorts. I'll definitely be referring back to my notes when it's time to storyboard!