This is a brief example of the development process I went through to create characters for our project commissioned by ‘Nickelodeon’, “See Something Say Something” (link to film). The project saw us tell the stories of four kids who have in some way been effected by bullying, see below the process for our first story, Marcus.

When creating the character to be used against a recorded voiceover, I spent a lot of time listening to the character’s voice, so I could start imagining what he would look like, how he would act, what clothes he would wear. I then began looking at photos of people to draw references from and make the character more believable and engaging. I drew and re-drew until a solid character design began to emerge.

Marcus went through about 8 stages of development and styles before I was happy with a character that was representative of the voice, and that would appeal to the client and audience.