
In California, Elefante is hopeful union representation will give performers a voice in decisions about issues including the larger-than-life costumes, which can cause long-term injuries when ill-fitted, and the safety of performing in parades during rain. Angela Nichols moved to California to be a TV writer and often works as a writer in addition to her job as an entertainment host at Disneyland, where she assists the character performers when they’re interacting with guests. Earlier this month, the California character performers and the union organizing them, Actors’ Equity Association, said they had filed a petition for union recognition. A good Character Designer will have a keen eye for detail in human expression and the ability to understand the story of a character. Creating memorable and iconic characters is often based on simple shapes and ideas — think of Mickey Mouse’s round ears and how instantly recognizable they are.
Lead Character Concept Artist
The final term focuses on career development to prepare you for a successful career as a concept artist for film and games. A character designer (or character artist) is a type of concept artist who conceptualizes characters, showing action, anatomy, and costumes from different perspectives that define and actualize them. They interpret a character's personality and physical traits from a brief into an expressive illustration, using subtle cues of facial expression, pose, gesture, posture, etc. Learn foundational concept art processes and techniques while building your interpersonal skills and industry knowledge.
Skills required to become a character designer
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Create characters and props in Photoshop and explore essential concepts, principles, and workflows within the industry. Why now for the California character performers, so many decades after their Florida counterparts organized? Unlike in Florida where performing as a character often is a full-time job, many of the character performers in Southern California have multiple other gigs, often in Hollywood movies and TV.
Lead Character Artist- Contract Position
Graduate with a solid foundation and original work for your portfolio! From art history to the latest techniques, learn the fundamentals of both disciplines using Photoshop. Explore light, color, perspective and anatomy and create polished art for your portfolio. Character designers must excel in taking direction, visualizing from abstract concepts, and communicating their ideas. They produce the initial designs and set the tone for key imagery within a film or video game.
Learn advanced 2D and 3D concept art techniques for film, games, and publishing. Create characters, creatures, props, and environments using Photoshop, Blender, and ZBrush, and examine industry production pipelines and creative workflows. This intensive course covers environment, creature and character design, plus matte painting using hand painting, photo-bashing and paint-over techniques.
California Disney characters are unionizing decades after Florida peers. Hollywood plays a role

As such, Actors’ Equity Association officials understand the unique needs of the theme park performers in ways that would be difficult for other unions to grasp. Discover advanced character illustration techniques and create various narrative artworks to client briefs. Whether you want to work in film, games or book publishing, this career-focused course prepares you for an exciting career in your chosen field. Part of a Character Designer’s role is to imagine the character from different perspectives, showing action, anatomy, and unique expressions that define the character and bring it to life. In 3D animation, these articulations of a character will first be used in the 3D modeling process, then later in the animation itself.
It’s among the reasons the California performers are organizing to be represented by a union now, more than four decades after their Florida counterparts did so. ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — During three years of working as a parade performer at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California, Zach Elefante always has had a second or third job to help him earn a living. We are looking for passionate, driven people with a love for animated storytelling to become DreamWorkers!
Diploma of Digital Art (Concept Art)
Those tensions came to a head in the late 2010s as a new leader of the local Teamsters affiliate in Orlando began targeting the costumed character performers for harassment. The character performers pushed back and the fight went up to James Hoffa, then-head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who intervened. When there is a new stage show, the shoes of the costumes need to be tested to make sure the performers won’t trip or slip on stage. Union representatives make sure “face performers,” whose faces are visible, such as Cinderella, have the right makeup and double check that parade dancers have ice packs available to nurse sore knees. “A lot of performers get the sense that if they don’t give their full availability, we won’t be in shows … and that will impact other jobs we need to sustain a living in this area,” said Elefante, who lives in Santa Ana, California.
Character designer job description
Most of the more than 35,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California already were unionized, and the parades and character department members were among the holdovers. Elefante performs at rival Universal Studios Hollywood and works as a tour guide for the movie studios. ” show at Disneyland, Chase Thomas works as the director of operations for a theater festival and previously has had jobs as a visual effects coordinator and entertainment licensing agent. While Disney asks character performers to be available to work at any time, that demand isn’t always rewarded with scheduled work hours, the California performers said. Get hands-on experience creating concept art from scratch using Photoshop and working with client briefs.
Character Designers may work with physical materials such as pencil, paper, ink, chalk, mixed media, etc to produce their primary sketches, or create completely digital art using computer software. The software used will depend on whether the project is in 2D or 3D. “It’s about having a seat at the table and being a part of the conversation from the performers’ perspective,” Elefante said. Unclean costumes are a perennial problem, and it was a top reason for the Florida performers wanting to organize with the Teamsters in the early 1980s. The other reasons included kids kicking Disney villains like Captain Hook in the shins and adults grabbing at the chests of performers playing Mickey Mouse to see if there was a man or woman underneath.
In 2D animation, these will be used as reference points from which to animate, and Storyboard Artists will refer to character design to express the story. There always existed a culture clash in Florida between the costumed character performers and the traditional Teamsters union leaders of truck drivers and warehouse workers. The drivers often viewed the performers as living charmed lives, paid to dress up every day as if it were Halloween. When many of their Hollywood gigs dried up because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recent actors’ and writers’ strikes, the character performers wanted more consistent scheduling at Disneyland once it reopened after a yearlong, pandemic-related closure.
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