For my simulated work experience I created a character expression sheet for the second year’s main character, we decided on this after I had looked over her work so far as well as her animatic, and then after sending over a few sketches of her character as well as some previous character work I had done.

She expressed that she felt that she wanted to complete the turnaround herself as she still had some things to figure out about the character, but she said she liked my expression sketches and asked me to create an expression sheet. Normally this task would be done by character designers/artists within a professional industry pipeline to help storyboard artists, animators etc with visualising how different character’s faces would move and where limits would be with extreme expressions. 

I found this feedback was very helpful as it wasn’t too critical or vague and gave me a very clear direction to move forward on, I did find the task a bit daunting as I don’t have any previous experience working with someone else’s character especially as it was drawn in a different style to mine, but I found the task interesting and enjoyed working on the sheet. The only negative part of this task was that she messaged me quite late, and we didn’t end up being able to talk her project through in person which meant I couldn’t get as much feedback as I drew the sheet as I had wanted, as well as not giving me the maximum amount of time to complete the work.  

My main take-aways from this experience is recognising the work that goes into understanding someone else’s character fully before being able to draw and change them, I used a lot of the tools taught during or character design classes to help map to the face and body when sketching the character, to make sure I got the proportions right. This project also emphasised the importance of proper communication, making sure you have enough time for everything as well as making sure the work you are doing is exactly what the person is expecting of you. I will take this knowledge into the LIAF project where communication is crucial and getting information and roles sorted as soon as possible is the best way to avoid late hand-ins.