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Working with characters is a big game now. Animated characters are used widely and very popular in today's graphic requirements, be it an ad on the internet or simple carousels, posters, banners, and most importantly, in explainer videos.
Animated videos are rising and are setting a new trend in this era of advertising and marketing through videos. Many businesses leverage explainer videos with animated characters to explain their product or service.
In these animated videos, one of the first steps is to make a storyboard. The storyboards are a series of continuous and relative visuals, created in alignment or according to the scripts, that form into a story in Adobe Illustrator. After the storyboard is ready, you can animate them in After Effects. Sometimes when you make a character in a continuous story in these visuals, you will need a character in different poses.
Knowing how to make character animation video without character poses seems incomplete. In this blog, I will tell you the technique to design these character poses easily and quickly for your character animation video. These are the basic things you need to keep in mind while making character poses for animation.
Character poses for animation
If you are a designer and working on a storyboard for an animated video, there are chances that you are facing difficulties during character making. It would be best if you had a character in different poses like standing, sitting, back pose, side pose, and so on, so that you can use it to show any situation.
Online resources are limited with their character poses. You can find many characters but not the same character with the different poses. There is only one way to design them, and that is with your design tools, which can be challenging at times. However, it is not as hard to design these poses of characters.
Let us start with simple character poses.
Take a simple character standing facing front from any vector file. You can download it from any source, such as Freepik or Vecteezy. I have taken a character from the website stroryset.com.
Let's dive into designing a character with different poses.
Front Pose
Take a look at this image below. It shows the character I chose facing you. Here As the character's front view is what is seen to you, this pose is called a front pose.
In this front view, mostly the character looks straight at you, and all the features of the character, such as hands, face, etc., are shown clearly.
Side pose
In the side pose, you will be able to see how the character's side proportions are proportioned. Let's take a look at some of the aspects you would have to make while developing a side view of a character.
In the side pose of a character, there are two possible positions. One is appropriately gazing to the left or right, and the other is some figure moving into the front, as depicted in the image below. The character is shown in two different stances when he turns to the left in this image.
If you take a closer look at the character's posture, there are certain key aspects to bear in mind.
- The character's ear should be hidden behind the character's skull in the first place.
- If you are creating the feet, the character's respective shoulder and bicep should be placed below the torso of the figure.
- The character's respective leg should be slightly hidden below the front leg layer of the body.
The same points are to be kept in mind during the designing of the right side of the character. But this time, the figure must be designed towards the right side of the character.
Back pose
Sometimes you might need characters to show that the character is focusing on the things you are, that is, the character and you are facing the same direction.
For example, if you are a student and a teacher writing something on the blackboard, you can directly see the back pose of the teacher. In such scenarios, you will need the back pose of the character.
Here again, we have two poses of the character in the back pose
- Turn Around back
- Straight back
Here I have some points for you to keep in mind while you are designing the back pose of your characters.
When developing the turn around back position, keep the following points in mind:
- One ear should be concealed behind the head.
- One leg should be hidden behind the front leg in order to do this. (Front leg: varies depending on whether the relevant side is to the left or to the right)
- Instead of showing facial features such as eyes, mouth, nose, and so on, hairs from the rear of the head should be presented.
When developing the straight back position, the following should be considered:
- Both ears should be presented with some outside part of the ear.
- Both legs should be depicted in a straight line, with the shoes portrayed from the rear perspective.
- It is preferable to reveal hair on the back of the head rather than facial features such as the eyes and nose or lips.
Wrapping up
When working as a designer, you must always improve your illustration skills. In addition, this form of a lesson or, to put it another way, a rapid study of the illustrations will give you more confidence in your design skills as you learn more about illustration creation.
A majority of designers are concerned that they would be unable to show the character or any other views of any representation of this nature. These are just the basic and simple poses. There are even more poses that designers create, which include the character doing many things facing various directions.
It is, of course, a time-consuming job as character making requires a detailed eye. It can be, however, used in various types of videos, including 2D animation, explainer videos, etc.
In webdew, we have a team of skilled designers who understand character illustrations and have made several videos. If you are looking to make character animation videos for your product or service, webdew is where you can find assistance. Visit our website www.webdew.com or contact us to know more.
Editor: Amrutha
