The Digital Charactor Design

Digital character design is a newly emergent design subject founded on the burgeoning computer technology. It represents human's endless pursuit of perfection in screen visual art, and also the advancement of the technology itself. After years of rapid growth, nowadays, digital character design becomes an integrated part in film making, game development, and various visual art production pipelines. It presents a form of reality but beyond its limits, and constantly pushes the boundary of artists' imagination. Digital arts derived from traditional art forms but benefited by the rapid advancing technology. It fits the pace of our digital age lifestyle, and uncovered a whole new stream of design approach. Still every day, digital characters continuously re-define the word of "possibility".This article is trying to make an in-depth explanation about the definition, range, origin, technical progression and applications of digital character design, to analyse the workflow from the perspective of art and technologies respectively, and crystallize theories through case study. Based on the study of the domestic and international industry environment, I will try to list and analyse the obstacles that limit the industry in China.This article is structured into five chapters. The first chapter introduces the concept of digital character design, how many different types and streams it consists, and industry implementations. The first part of this chapter defines what digital character design is by comparing it with the traditional design approaches. The second part describes how different industries utilises digital character design to achieve different objectives, showing the broad demand of this discipline.The second chapter is focused on the reason why this particular design approach is invented. I'll present a short history of the origin and development of digital character design, and analyse the progress of productions techniques through different time phases. This chapter consists of two parts. The first part explains the four factors those lead to the birth of digital characters in detail. The second part I use time as agent, dividing the progression of digital character design into three stages.Chapter three and chapter four are the keys of in this article. In these chapters, the concept of 2D design and 3D creation is introduced.There are three parts in chapter three. Part one is about the design pitch. In part two we touch upon creativity through methodology, creative perspective, and the way to foster creative mindset. Part three is about the visual expression of the character. We'll be focused on forms and the influences of the traditional art theory.Chapter four introduces the three most important parts in 3D production workflow of digital character creation-modelling, texture making, and rendering. Part one covers the modelling principles, the creation methods, and the different types of 3D data. In part two we start with the workflow of the texture making process, then to explain the importance of an observative eye and the understanding of styles. And in part three we eyes on the rendering process, the rendering methods, lighting and the application of traditional art theory in rendering 3D images. Last but not least, in chapter five, through an industry analysis I'll try to locate the barriers that impede our domestic industry. The first part of this chapter compares the Chinese and the international industry environment. And the second part brings forward the four factors those restricted the competence of the Chinese artists and developers.