How Do You Make an Unappealing Character Design Look Appealing?

In my opinion, an animator should never be concerned with the design of a character. Countless animators have proven over the years that animation transcends the aesthetic appeal of a character. I remember when I was in school studying animation. A student graduating a year or so before me had created a brilliant short film about a scarecrow chasing a crow through corn fields. The scarecrow was entirely made of thin tubes, with no textures, and a low-poly straw hat. The weak uncreative character design didn't hinder the performance in the slightest. In fact, in some ways it augmented the quality of the animation because the animator didn't have to think about weighting issues, intersection problems, muscles, textures, etc. It was raw animation in its truest form.

I think this rings true for all great animation. The appeal or lack of appeal of a character's design should exist independently of the animation. Of course, that's not to say a great design won’t bring more appeal to the viewer's relationship to the character. Having a great design is...well....great! But an animator's ability to make the viewer connect with the performance, personality, and nature of the character's “soul”, will not be impeded by poor design.

Let's look at some concrete examples of this. Take the characters we see animated in so many animation school programs. I've seen sack jump animations that have had me on the floor laughing. Ballie, at Animation Mentor, is a couple of leg tubes and a sphere. This is hardly creative design at its best. But when a student flawlessly makes Ballie perform in a way that touches me, the symmetry, lack of textures, and flat surfaces, fall to the wayside.

We can look at poor design choices and how they may have affected a character's performance in films as well. I've spoken about Luxo Jr. in another article. The design of Luxo is nothing special. I'm sure no one would disagree with that. It's an ordinary metallic lamp with nothing interesting about its design per say. And yet, when it moves, it springs to life. The animation works so strongly that the essence of a child screams out at you. You cease to think about the design and become absorbed with the character's thought processes. When he reacts to squishing the ball I sincerely feel he's sad. Look at the design for Eve in Wall-E. It’s an oval! And yet the animation is nothing short of fantastic, and we never question the design choice. In fact, as an animator, I revel in the fact that Pixar purposefully chose a simplistic design and then made me ignore that stark fact by absorbing me into her performance so skillfully.

As an animator working in the industry, you will always be given characters that have poor designs. Even psychologically, you can work everyday on low-res puppets that look terrible. But as long as the animator can connect with the essence of the character to create an intriguing performance, it will always come out in the final product. And in some cases, when the animation is brilliant, it will rise above all aesthetic obstacles.

Guest blogger Aaron Gilman