Narrative Character Design – Creating Heroes with Ryan Meinerding

In this workshop, Ryan Meinerding shares his workflow for designing characters that effectively illustrate a story’s narrative. Ryan begins by discussing how to create iconic and memorable characters, creating a legitimate reality, framing characters by values the audience should judge them by, empathy and story. He illustrates these topics by evaluating some popular examples from film and animation to explains the importance of thinking about Character vs Character, Character vs Environment, Visual Design vs True Character and Range of Change. For the demonstration of this workshop, he begins by breaking down the Story that will inspire design; an old man, Arnold, who develops superhuman strength and the surrounding story points. Ryan then uses Adobe Photoshop to design the Range of Change for Arnold’s character from a frail old man, to his new disguised strengths, to his empowerment as a super hero. While sharing timelapses of design and development, Ryan’s workflow is revealed as he explains how decisions are made, exploration, reference and thought process. For those looking to further their understanding of how to approach Narrative Character Design, this workshop offers invaluable insights from one of the industry’s leading artists.