Major project brief: Character creator

This marks the beginning of my major project blog. Here I will record data as my project continues through the next couple of months. Here is a copy of the brief that I submitted:


Name: John Francis Keeley
Project title: Character Designer
Design disciplines which best describe your project:
  • Character
  • Graphics (Print)
  • Illustration
Project background:
Character creator will focus on the creation of numerous characters. Through this I create not only the characters but also a personal history and the world they inhabit.
Throughout the years there have been numerous media where many unique and interesting characters came to be. A popular media today is video game character design. A well known designer in this field is Tetsuya Nomura for his work on the Final Fantasy series. For years he has been the main character designer for most of Square's projects. For A good referance to his work I will be looking at the books that have been published containing his artwork.


Project description:
Character creator is a project that will revolve around the design and implementation of characters. The purpose of this project is to design several characters based around the fantasy genre, giving each of them their own unique background and distinct look.
The target audience will be fantasy fans and anime fans as the look of the characters may be be influenced by Japanese style illustration. The characters will have a serious tone and therefore will not be aimed at young children.
A problem this project solves is how a character's background will influence their look. For an example say a character comes from a very strict household. Does that mean their look would be very bland to go with the household, or would the character be very flashy to oppose the household.

Project aspirations:
Mostly I want to improve the quality of the characters I design. By the end of the module I want to have a far better understanding of the processes involved when creating characters. On a personal level I want these characters that have been on my mind for years to look as impressive as they deserve to be.
I want my characters to be interesting both in looks and in personality like the characters designed by Nomura.


Study support: Your DES509 project blog URL: http://keeley-j.blogspot.com/


The results of this submission may be viewed at:
http://www.justinmagee.com/node/460?sid=179