Skills and Technological Needs for a Character Design Career

Skills and Technological needs required for character design

Skills

-Drawing Skills: you need to be able to create work in a large variety of styles and show that you are capable of strong attention to detail.

-Understanding of theory: Understanding of the theory behind character design would help immensely when trying to get a job in the role as it means you have a more solid understanding of how to make a solid and effective character design.

-Creativity: Having a creative imagination is useful as it allows you to come up with original and innovative ideas, which helps the director, and helps convey the story. Your creativity should also be varied in the regard that it should be able to span over multiple art styles, letting you have your work in multiple types of setting to a more successful degree.

-Collaboration: to be able to understand what your team wants from you and be able to produce it effectively is a very useful skill. Also, being able to communicate your own ideas effectively to your team is important.

-Understanding of the pipeline: Knowing the capabilities of the people you are working with is very important.

-Passion: Consuming media with character design and having a passion and love of the industry.

Requirements

Qualifications: Diploma / Degree / Apprenticeships in a relevant area.

A portfolio containing your best and most relevant work

Technological Needs

-Understanding of and owning image editing software (such as adobe photoshop, aftereffects, etc.)

-Understanding of how to use and owning 3D modelling, sculpting and painting software (Blender, Maya, Zbrush, Quixel)

-Understanding of how to use and owning 2D animation software (TVPaint, Adobe Animate/Illustrator/Photoshop, Krita, Clip Studio Paint).

-Physical art materials (Pens, Pencils, Paper, etc.)

ScreenSkills. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/animation/pre-production/character-designer/> [Accessed 20 February 2022].