DIGI
CHAR
Chapter 05 · 2D Digital Animation
Character
ization
From design tips and character types to staging, appeal, and making your character ready for the stage.
What’s Inside
Designing characters that breathe life into your story
This chapter covers the complete characterization pipeline — from sketching concepts and understanding character archetypes to preparing your artwork for animation in Flash.
- 01Character Designing Tips
- 02Character Types
- 03Line of Action
- 04Staging Techniques
- 05Appeal
- 06Exaggeration
- 07Acquiring References
- 08Digital Creation & Animation Prep
Characterization
Character Designing Tips
Good character design begins with interesting shapes and forms, strong contrasts, and well-balanced proportions. Use only the minimum essential details — avoid generic designs and give each character a unique look that immediately suggests their personality.
You can take inspiration from other works, but your character must have originality. The level of design detail is also influenced by the application field — a character for a children’s show calls for very different choices than one for a dramatic feature.
💡 Sketching regularly from photographs, from life, or from imagination may result in excellent design ideas you’d never reach by thinking alone.
Characterization
Character Types
Stories require characters of varied personalities — both positive and negative traits — depending on the storyline. Acquiring as many characteristic traits as possible while designing makes your characters richer and more believable.
- Radiates hope with a confident smile
- Good behaviour and helping tendency
- Ideal body proportions
- Appealing suit, groomed hair, attractive face
- Radiates negativity
- Furious, cunning, and wild look
- Big barrel chest, heavy thick neck
- Huge chin and jaws, heavy eyebrows
- Long heavy arms with big hands, small hip
- Makes viewers smile on entry
- Elongated head, thin neck
- Pear-shaped body, big feet
- Quick and active movements
- Looks shabby and dishevelled
- Loose, low crotch baggy pants
- Ungroomed hair hangs over eyes
- Smaller head held forward, drowsy eyes
- Humpbacked, long droopy hands
Characterization
Line of Action
To express an action effectively, the body parts must be oriented in certain ways. The Line of Action is an imaginary line that extends through the main action of the character — it is the backbone of a powerful pose.
A strong, clear line of action communicates the character’s intent instantly. If you want to emphasize an action at different intensity levels, adjust the line of action accordingly — a gentle arc for a relaxed movement, a sharp diagonal for explosive energy.
📐 The Line of Action is the invisible spine of every great pose. The more pronounced the curve, the more energy and emotion the pose communicates.
Characterization
Staging Techniques
Staging attracts and directs the audience’s attention to the right part of the screen at the right moment, preventing them from missing vital actions in the story’s flow.
While presenting any idea — an action, a personality, or a mood — it must be completely and unmistakably clear. Staging is achieved through the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, and the angle and position of the camera.
A well-staged scene tells the audience exactly where to look — and makes them feel they figured it out themselves.— Staging Principle
Characterization
Appeal
Appeal in animation is comparable to the charisma of a film actor. The personality of a character must be designed to create an impact with the audience — irrespective of whether it is heroic, comic, villainous, cowardly, or cute.
The viewer must feel that the character is real and interesting. A complicated or hard-to-read face will lack appeal, no matter how technically proficient the execution. Clarity of expression is everything.
🎭 Appeal doesn’t mean “likeable” — a great villain can have tremendous appeal. It means the character is magnetic, readable, and impossible to ignore.
Characterization
Exaggeration
A perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons. Exaggeration is an effect useful to create a mood — achieved by alterations in the physical features of a character or scene elements.
Exaggerating using perspective improves focus. However, the key rule is: only the character acting as the centre of focus should be exaggerated more heavily. Do not exaggerate all characters equally — it creates confusion about who is important.
Characterization
Acquiring References
Ideas for character style, costumes, and accessories can come from storybooks, stock images, the works of established artists, magazines, libraries, photographs, and the internet.
Sketch many imaginary forms of the character directly using a digitizing tablet such as Wacom. Take a variety of photographs and use them as reference for your character design. Alternatively, sketch the character on paper using conventional media like pencil or pen, scan the sketch, and import it into Flash.
Characterization
Digital Creation & Animation Prep
The digital creation stage is also called the cleaned-up drawing process. Using Flash Tools, you recreate the character digitally with reference to the scanned sketch placed in a bottom layer. Once complete, three preparatory steps make the character ready for animating:
The moving parts of the character — head, neck, torso, hip, upper and lower arms, hands, upper and lower legs, and shoes — are individually separated out so they can be animated independently.
Each separated part is converted into an individual graphic symbol and named appropriately. These symbols are placed in separate layers and assembled into the desired overall body pose.
Body parts rotate from their pivot points, which by default are placed at the part’s own physical centre. These must be repositioned so each part moves with respect to its adjacent attached part — for example, the head must pivot relative to the neck, not its own centre.
⚙️ Correctly set pivot points are the difference between natural, fluid animation and robotic, broken movement. Take care with each symbol before you animate.
Summary at a Glance
The Big Picture
Good character design is one of the cornerstones of good animation. Designing your characters properly gives their personalities the room to play out a full drama on screen.
In this chapter we explored popular character types and key design tips, studied the principles of Appeal and Exaggeration, and examined how Line of Action and Staging work together to direct the audience’s eye.
Finally, we walked through how to translate sketches into their digital counterparts and prepare them — separating parts, creating symbols, and adjusting pivot points — so they are fully ready for animation.
Practice
Activities
Design the characters for the storyboard you created earlier. Draw each character in front, ¾, and profile poses.
Draw a character in a variety of action poses, applying the Line of Action principle to each one.
Scan your character sketch and digitally recreate it using Flash tools in the cleaned-up drawing process.
Separate the moving parts of the character and save them as graphic symbols. Arrange them in different layers, then adjust the pivot points appropriately so the character is ready for animating.