So, to start off, it's very important that we know
what kind of character we are going to create.
The first thing we already kind of know, that is
inferred by the title of this course, is the style.
But what exactly do I mean when I refer to stylized instead of cartoony?
It's really important to know that the art style and
detail level will also inform the animation style.
So, cartoony and overly simplified characters
can be more forgiving and easier to create,
since they can behave and animate in strange and absurd ways, without seeming odd.
The style and animation can be snappy and absurd, and it still totally works,
since it's so far detached from reality that
it's easier to get away with not being realistic.
Overly realistic characters on the other side need
high attention to detail and anatomical accuracy.
And I know the footage in the background is also live
action, but all CG elements still need to fit in.
And if you have CG characters that are supposed to be realistic,
then it's even more important that these mesh well with everything else.
If it's not fully faithfully realistic, there will be a sense of uncanny valley.
Uncanny valley is basically when something appears to be real,
but small differences in the details or in the motion make it seem creepy and alien.
Think of androids that look and talk like they seem real,
but once they really start moving their faces,
you immediately notice that something is off,
and it comes off as really unsettling.
If you're interested in more of this topic, I can
recommend to watch the talk by Hjalte Chalmersson
called The Illusion of Animation that he gave at the Blender conference.
He gives a more detailed explanation on the overall thought experiment.
and how to manage the different styles from really
cartoony to stylized to abstract or realistic.
I added the link in the description, so check that out if you're interested.
But my goal for this character is to show you how to strike a middle ground,
to create a stylized but believable and grounded character.
Apart from the general style, we also need to
figure out what the character itself should be.
So simple questions like ethnicity, gender, age, time period, occupation, attitude.
You can basically go wild with this, but to give an example,
this is basically what I came up with for the character Rain.
So she's obviously a black woman, young adult, roughly present time,
but I intentionally left the occupation and attitude ambiguous.
This basically allows her to be placed into many different scenarios.
This was pretty important in this case since
the character Rain will be made available
and heavily used for the upcoming animation course.
But for your character, I'd suggest you make them much more clear cut,
which will make them also more interesting if you
already have a kind of predefined emotional state
and just in general what the character is supposed to be.
But even though I say go wild, try to create something that can actually move.
For that, we should set some healthy limitations.
So for example, with my character, I made sure that
the character will be easier to rig and animate
by choosing relatively tight clothing that won't
need simulation or just additional rigging to happen.
I also decided to go for mesh hair.
So all the hair is completely modeled instead of using hair particles.
And this is overall just easier to handle in terms of animation and also rendering
because I wanted to make the character very optimized for viewport display
so that what you see is basically what you get,
what will be rendered in the viewport, either
in the viewport shading or even in Eevee
is going to closely represent the finished result in cycles.
I also early on decided to go with a ponytail,
which is a good example of creating simple follow
through animation for the animation course.
But again, you can go for totally different hairstyle and add a lot more detail to it,
especially when you don't plan to animate the character.
If it's just supposed to be for a single pose,
it's going to make your job much more easier on deciding what are your limitations.
I also decided to keep all the materials and textures rather simple and stylized
to fit with the character model and viewport shading
so that there's not a stark difference between them.
These things were all planned early on to keep the overall scope focused.
But it's not just about limitations on animation and rigging.
If you're planning on adding burning armor plating,
sounds great, but if the limbs can't even move a little
because the plating is just covering all of the joints in a weird way,
or if you can't render the fire,
or if there's some other limitations on how to make the
fire look good and it's too complicated or expensive,
then maybe add some more compromises.
Maybe go for something a bit more simple.
But once you have a plan in mind,
it's time to go to the next task, which is doing a bit of research.