How to Develop Character Illustrations

Character Illustrations

Any Character design starts with defining the character’s personality traits,

age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, etc. which form the foundation of the

character’s appearance, clothes, pose, actions, surroundings, everything. The

designers start with the above data to make a few quick sketches and after a

couple of iterations and line work renderings have the character ready to

play his part in the story.

How to Develop Character Illustrations in Role-Play Scenarios

The Challenge

People move through life with various feelings, actions, and poses and your

characters need to be illustrated in a similar way.

But how do you illustrate feelings and emotions without investing a large

amount of time and effort? And adding on to this challenge, what if these

character poses and emotions were not just “nice to have” but an integral

part of the learning experience?


The Challenge

Recently, our own media team had this same challenge while working on a

simulation for a sales training prototype. The scenario is a salesman talking

with a skeptic client. The simulation has branched scenarios with various

dialogues between the client and salesman, with each client response adapted

to the category of response from the salesman, be it a “Good Response, Ok

response, or Poor response”.


Body Language, illustrated in characters, is used to

teach two things to the user:

1. How to use their own body language while interacting with a client.

2. How to decipher a client’s body language while interacting.


How We Do Character Illustrations in 3 Steps

STEP 1: Create a Pose Mapping Sheet

The starting point is the branched dialogue sheet, complete with categorized

responses and communication steps. We then prepare a pose mapping sheet

to assign body language cues to each piece of dialog. The assigned pose

depends upon the type of response from the learner and the level of

communication in the conversation. This step takes some time but is critical

for creating a responsive character.


STEP 2: Capture Poses in Photographs

Use a person within your organization to model each pose and emotion

required for your pose mapping sheet. Try to use a similar set and attire for

accuracy. In the example below, I modeled the different responses we needed

for the sales training prototype.


STEP 3: Illustrate Your Character Based Upon

Your Photos

With the reference for each pose captured in the prior step, have your

illustrators draw similar poses for you character. The character may have

their own personality but the details and body language should follow the

photographs.


Body language cues were added in the illustrations and the

results were great and communicated the mood of the

situation in the scenario.

Character Illustrations Are Integral to the

Learning Experience

“Body Language” plays an important part in any illustrated scenario and if

done right can take the experience of an illustrated work to a higher level.

Incorporating it requires sharp observation skills, so banking on memory to

get it right under tight deadlines is a recipe for disaster. The above method

can be a quick way of getting the “Body Language” right in any illustration,

even where work is handled by multiple illustrators.


Character Illustrations Are Integral to the

Learning Experience

How well we train the salesman to understand physical cues will directly

impact sales performance. Character Illustrations are not a nice to have

added feature, they are essential for creating an effective learning experience.


To Read the Original Article Click Here:

How to Develop Character Illustrations in Role-Play

Scenarios

http://www.infoprolearning.com/blog/how-to-identify-culture-of-accountability-infopro-learning/

http://www.infoprolearning.com/blog/how-to-develop-character-illustrations/

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How to Develop Character Illustrations