Character designers have the opportunity to make their dreams come true by giving life to the beings that reside only in their imagination, which enthuse large audiences and often become true worldwide icons. This workshop encourages each participant to design their own characters, analysing the principles, techniques and tricks used by professional artists.
In the workshop you will see short versions of real projects carried out during the first year of the DigiPen Europe Bilbao University Degree in Fine Arts in Digital Art and Animation.
The aim of the workshop is that each participant should design their own characters by analysing key principles such as the outline, proportions, target audience, narrative genre and specific medium (animated short film, comic or video game). The workshop will also examine how the characters' morphological, social and psychological features influence the design and what needs to be done to ensure that the design is consistent with the story.
Estimated time: 1h30'.
Location
Speakers
Carlos Varela, in 1985 worked on the very first animation feature film produced in the Basque Country. Since then, he has been devoted to animation in all formats: film, television, advertisements, video games, and web. Varela has worked for a number of leading entertainment media companies, including Warner, Universal, BBC, RAI, Globomedia, and others. He has also served as designer and director on animated TV series, directed four feature films, and served as assistant director on another four. Varela has received two GOYA awards from the Spanish Film Academy and has been a finalist several other times. Recently, one of the feature films he worked on as creative designer and director won two awards at the Houston Film Festival — Best Animated Feature film and Best Applied Technological Innovation in Animation — for his use of Flash animation software in a theatrical film. Varela’s expertise resides in character design and storyboarding, and he has also been an animation director and collaborated as a screenwriter. He has several years’ experience in teaching subjects related to animation and video game production.
