VAILL 385 Character Design Fall 2012: TURNAROUNDS

“no man ever became great or good except through many & great Mistakes. I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes. “- William Gladstone

Building a character turnaround is tricky but is a great exercise to learn how to retain the appearance of a character from all angles. The Key here is thinking of your character in terms of VOLUME rather than just flat line. Refer to the post on THINKING IN 3D.

Wether you are an illustrator doing a comic or chidren's book, an animator animating a character or a concept artist, you will need to be able to design a character that looks good at all angles and be able to redraw it accurately again and again.

Drawing a turnaround of a character will not only help you better understand your character, but also reveal flaws in it's design. Your goal should be for your character to be interesting, appealing, understandable and recognizable from all angles.

The best way to do turnarounds is to start with a 3/4 view and then spin him around in your mind to get the other views.

For major characters, there are generally four to five drawings that need to be done: Front View, 3/4 Front View, Side View, 3/4 Back View, and/or Back View. For minor characters, usually only a Front 3/4 View and a Back 3/4 View are needed."

Key Points to this excersise:

1) retain the appearance/integrity/readability of the character
2) ensure that the character is appealing and interesting from all angles.
3) reveal flaws and weaknesses of design

TYPES OF TURNAROUNDS
Single Pose: If new at this, the best kind of turnaround to start with is a simple single pose turnaround. this means that you are drawing a character in exactly the same pose from various angles. This is valuable as it allows the artist to concentrate on accurately drawing the character and their pose from different angles rather than fiddling with a new gesture each time.

Multiple Pose Turnaround: this is where the character is drawn from various angles, in various actions and activities. This is used by an artist to show how different angles of the character may look while it is in action.

T-pose Turnaround: The purpose is to make sure the storybaord artists, animators, and/or computer modellers can re-create the character accurately. The function is not to entertain, but primarily to inform. A T-pose is a stagnant neutral pose (often with the arms out in a T) that allows a 3-D modeler to quickly see all necessary information so that they can sculpt it accurately in the computer where it can then be handed off to other team members.

TECHNIQUES/TOOLS TO HELP

1) Landmark lines

These are great tools to use when drawing a character from different angles. Essentially, a straight line is drawn at specific landmarks on your design (these can be however few or many you choose.) some of these landmarks are usually a ground-line and head line. you can also place landmark lines at various joints or important points in the design. These lines are continued across the sheet/paper/surface . When turning the pose 360 degrees, at any point, these lines will match up with the pose in its various angles. thus when drawing different views you can use these landmark lines to ensure that the head, knees, shoulders, feet (landmarks) etc. will all be correctly drawn relative to each other.

2) Perspective Boxes

Similar to Landmark Lines, Cubes drawn in perspective around your character can help you understand how your character is fitting in space and how you may need to foreshorten certain features or indicate their volume.

3) 3D - models
whether using clay, rough play dough, a digital modeling program, or even just your kneaded eraser, this is a way you can help yourself see your characters key shapes in space and translate them on your paper. whether detailed or just catching the roughest basic shapes, making a 3D model of your character allows you to physically see its shapes and main components from different angles from which you can then draw. This is particularly helpful, especially for a character in an ongoing project - having a tactile piece of reference can help the design retain its integrity and accuracy even over time after many, many drawings and is especially useful when it must be understood and drawn by various artists. This can also be useful later when lighting your character.

4) Reference - similar to 3D models, but sometimes just nothing beats a good photograph of a living model - especially when trying to figure out accurate anatomy. Just remember, with photographic reference remember its just that, "reference," and not a substitute or crutch for good design.