Studio Brief 2 - Research - Brother Bear Character Design

One of my favourite creature character designs are the ones from Brother Bear. I really like the detailed studies that were produced. I decided to include this in my blog because I really like character design and I think I enjoy that the most out of all of the stages in an animation process.


These studies resonate in the animated feature. It is obvious that the key elements of the bears body were kept but simplified down in order to fit with the typical animated, Disney design. This is a perfect example of how important visual studies into the elements of what make up a character are. When developing any sort of character, it is clear that creating various observational drawings help create a believable character. Working from detailed drawings of anatomy to build a character is helpful in developing a believable looking animal.




Drawing images such as this one, where an animal is in action, focussing on the anatomy can determine where the tension in the muscle will be in order to exaggerate and clearly depict the action of the scene between two characters. You can clearly see where the tension is in the characters body due to the muscle study that has been built on top of. I would really like to put this process into action one day during one of character design processes because it is a useful technique in creating solid characters.

I would really love to develop my drawing skills in my responses to briefs further in my 2nd year because I would like to make character designing and concept designing my main attribute.