Illustrated Character Design and World Creation

Illustrated Character Design and World Creation

“Dear students, I really hope you’ve enjoyed this course and the first time I’ve shown my creative process from conception to birth. I’ve drawn back the curtains and revealed the inner workings of my mind. We live in extraordinary times and it can often be difficult to make sense of the world. I believe that through any expression of creativity we can reimagine and reshape our own universe and find comfort in the stories we want to tell. Time restrictions didn’t allow me to spend days on each lesson but this doesn’t mean our communication together stops here. As often as I can, I’ll be on the forums to chat about your ideas, characters and life in general. In the course, you’ve seen me discuss a number of topics. I’ve shown you my origin story as an up-and-coming illustrator working with various high profile clients. I expressed my passion regarding my personal projects Peleda, Junction and my most well known, the Scarygirl brand. You’ve seen how it’s manifested itself as a graphic novel, limited edition figures, exhibitions, video games, and a feature film in production. I’ve chatted about focusing my work around imaginary universes with relatable characters. I’ve demonstrated the common themes in my storytelling that revolve around what it means to be part of a family and also the subject of not judging something by how it appears. You’ve been able to see the main purpose in the work I do; to continue reimagining myths and traditions of my various backgrounds through film, fine art and illustrative works. I’ve shown through a number of exercises the ways in which you can generate ideas, how to apply them to creating unique and meaningful characters and envisioning the worlds they inhabit. You’ve been able to follow my step by step process in using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to build up shapes, layers, adjust shadows and add colour. I’ve revealed my finished project encapsulating my Australian heritage with an original character concept and an intriguing backstory. Finally, I opened myself up for a post-mortem analysis of my work, looked at ways you could apply your project to other mediums and left you with a list of useful tips. My hope going forward is you now have some new tools to unblock creativity, specifically in original character development and world design. I hope you share this knowledge with others and encourage your colleagues to participate. I truly wish you all the best for your future and look forward to seeing your wonderful minds at play. x Nathan ”

Partial transcription of the video

“So now that we've reached the end of this Domestika course, let's review what we've learned. So I've introduced myself and my work to show you how your projects can jump from one medium to another. And we've explored the influences that have shaped my practice and my philosophy To then dive in, and see my process. So first of all, I show you what materials and tools I use. And we discussed how ideas form and that by going down rabbit holes, we get to connect the dots in between them. And based on this creation process, we began thinking about our character. What we like. and what influences...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Illustrated Character Design and World Creation

• Level: Beginner
• 98% positive reviews (176)
• 3467 students
• 4 units
• 25 lessons (5h 18m)
• 1 download

• Category

  Illustration

• Software

  Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

• Areas

  Character Design, Digital Illustration, Traditional illustration, Vector Illustration