I’ve just signed-up for a character design course by Wouter Tulp on schoolism.com. For those of that don’t know who he is, here’s a link to his website https://www.woutertulp.com/. He’s not only one of my favorite character artists, but also one of my favorite artists full stop, so it wasn’t difficult picking this course from schoolism (i’m not getting paid to plug them by the way).
The course is called ‘conceptual characters’, there are nine lessons, and each lesson has a video where Wouter teaches you a new concept and then gives examples from other illustrators/animators/character designers etc… There’s also a section at the end where he critiques students who have paid a premium to get one-on-one feedback from the master himself, which is frankly more useful than the actual lessons, because Wouter gives you his thought process as he re-draws the students work.
Anyway, the first lesson is about how to generate ideas from simple prompts. The prompt for this lesson is ‘wise’ and ‘bottle’. The idea is to write down as many iterations of each word and then combine the two words to create three characters. From left to right my reasoning goes; streetwise miracle-cure peddler; Shaolin master demonstrating extreme concentration; Shaman mixing an unusual concoction.
I’ll keep you updated as I progress through the lessons.
Matt
mattwalkerart.com 