"Van" Character Design Process

Going in to this film we knew that what we had to work with in terms of characters was actually quite little. We weren't dealing with characters with big backstories, or larger than life personalities. Our film only truly consisted of two characters Father and Daughter who played very active roles in the story and so our team did their best to design the look of these characters, and they did so vigorously. A lot of work came out of the character design team, and we were very impressed with just how enthusiastic the team was in putting a lot of care into figuring out the look of these characters. We're thankful for their patience with putting the story together, as evolutions in the script called for some changes and reinterpretations throughout, but through this they did some great, and diverse work that gave us plenty of options to work with. It feels good to finally thank the team in the form of showcasing all their hard work here, and furthermore we'll go into some detail of the process.

But first, a thanks to our Character Design team members and Lead for taking on this part of the production!

Madi F.

Sidne Hermanson

Bianca

Charlotte

Donna Pham

Diego

Leila

Leylia Tori

Michaela Green

Nick O.

Bubba

Annie Tran

Maren

Sam Kallen

Jacky Cai

Victoria Geis - Character Design Lead

Alright so to kick things off, first we'll start with the work the team had done for the daughter, our main character. Our team members worked roughly or more clean depending on their stylistic preferences, and I think that was the most fun thing to see. All of the different styles and variety was great early on and its fascinating to see everyone's different design approaches and interpretations.

In no particular order, there was some of the design work that went into this character. One advantage the team had going in was the relatively consistent description of this character, and through all the design submissions for her, there seemed to be a unity amidst all the different approaches to her look early on. With feedback coming from all around, the team managed to quickly find a look that seemed to gel and we started to see more and more ideas that averaged to something more cohesive. We had initially imagined a small, young girl who is adventurous and, in the events of the story, a bit defiant. Ideas for specifics on her design started to evolve later on when a final design was chosen for the style of the characters.

The father had some different descriptions to follow, being portrayed very mellow and downtrodden in the story. His character was intended to serve as a sort of a looming presence, silently watching over his daughter, but lacking the strength to bring himself to be there for her in the most meaningful way. We wanted to make sure that we got this aspect across when he appears on screen, and through his actions as well. Once again, the character design team managed to find a good direction early on, some examples more exaggerated, others more subtle.

What we wanted to make sure of was that we didn't accidentally portray the father too differently than intended. Considering some ways in which we meant to portray him in the film, we could risk the danger of making him appear too imposing, or even menacing if not careful. Finding the balance of a large yet loving father who happens to be in a depressive state during the story was the main challenge for this character.

Lastly, we have the older sister character. The unique aspect of her character is that she is not physically present in the story like the other two are. So when one hears this they may think that there is no real point to designing her. Well, it's complicated; there are two factors at play here: 1, she actually did appear eventually but in a somewhat insubstantial state in a dream, and 2, we felt that we needed to show her in other forms at least a little bit as it was important to giving some clarity on some otherwise potentially confusing themes and aspects of the story.

Despite not being present, she was not an inactive presence entirely, and in a way the story exists because of this character, as well as other key props and spaces that we show off, specifically the Van. In order to tell the story and background of this character and her impact on the family, we needed to not only try to show her organically in the story, but a key design challenge was to tell her story through the Van, something she had owned.

The design requirements for the sister called for someone relatively carefree and freespirited, someone adventurous and wordly with a lot of interests and looks. Her description was that of a traveler, always on the road, and her and her sister shared memories in the Van. The character design team worked on finding ways to portray her, but took care to not design her too closely to the younger sister. A lot of ideas came in the form of longer, loose hair, bolder and more varied clothing choices, and tall and slender. The occasional drawings of her and her sister together help to demonstrate their connection.

Down the line we had wanted a stronger form of connection between the two in the story, and someone on the team had brought up that the jacket or sweater that some had been drawing could be a narrative device that perhaps the daughter ends up wearing herself throughout the story. The remainder of all the outfit variations were done for the purpose of having ideas for how to show her in all of the photographs we may see her in. The goal of this was to possibly show her in a different outfit in each photo, hopefully to further demonstrate her comfort with change and experimentation, and contrast her to the other characters.

It's fascinating how much effort ends up going into a character who is hardly there! We definitely didn't see that coming, but her relevance to the story called for it.

Ok, now let's get into the final designs. Along the way, a design that was liked was chosen as this direction was seen to fit the bill the closest. There were a lot of good choices, but admittedly we had all been too indecisive up to this point as there were too many choices that felt good, which is also a good thing in some ways; and so, a choice was made!

These designs were done and brought to a finish by Madi on our character design team. (Expression sheets done by Victoria Geis). One thing we really liked about her designs was their economy of line. Given all the deadlines and constraints we had to work with, we wanted to make sure that the character is design was simple enough to draw multiple times and quickly. A common need down the line up to this point was ensuring that we get rid of unnecessary detail and hone in on the more essential parts. We felt that these characters hit the mark we thought portrayed our characters best and started to explore the design further with iteration, costuming, and turnarounds which were continued to be done by all our members on the team. We wanted to give a very big thanks to Madi for all of the hard work she had done from this point forward, becoming responsible for the character turns and some further design explorations that got critiqued more meticulously until a final look was achieved. We recognize that for students involved in a production like this, espcially with a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, juggling school, the club, and whatever else can be a daunting task. And a thanks to everyone involved for the commitments you made to finding time to contribute to all the designing and pre vis up to this point.

We'll wrap this up with some of the iteration design done by the team. These were some of the last steps in the design process where things started to get more specific. Perhaps the thing we ended up putting the most care into was the jacket that the younger sister would wear. We needed to make sure that it was the same design across the girl and the older sister, and a bit big on the younger sister. You can see the final jacket design on the younger sister in the turnaround up above.

Annie Tran worked on the iterations of hair for the girl and older sister, and facial hair options for the father. These gave us plenty of options and ideas to check out, and iterations are exactly the kind of stuff that help the most on projects like this. There's other iteration sheets here for clothing done by Victoria Geis and Donna Pham

Well, and there we are! A special thanks to Victoria Geis for her great leadership, especially with all of her help and advice on character design and managing the team's operations. Victoria also did a lot of the design iterations and expressions of the character and gave direction on that front. Again, these may not be all the drawings that were done, everything we had here are files that had been uploaded to our server, but who knows how many other sketches were done. Which brings us to, once again, very much thank everyone on the team for putting in all the time they did, out of their own schedules even, to make these characters come to life!