1. Character Design Brainstorming
Erasmus+ strategic partnership RO01-KA _1
„Comics in teaching languages/
La BD en classe de langues”
Character Design
Alexandru Mîţă
European General Partnership’s Coordinator
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Brainstorming

2. Start with a mind map, thinking of the character’s role in the middle: protagonist. Begin associating words and writing them down.
Think with your senses as well as your imagination, and don’t censor yourself. When you are finished, it’s time to refine the mind map.
Circle the words that stand out to you, that describe a character you would be interested in.
Don’t worry if other will be interested at this point, if you’re not then there’s no point in choosing it.

3. Create the physical character, with words and sketches:
General physical description
Body type
Proportions
Material make-up (is your character flesh, robotics, alien, or anything else?)
Gender
Surface texture
Colour
Facial Structure
Movement (how does your character physically carry him/herself?)

4. Create a character history.
A character’s life never begins at the beginning of your story, and the most believable characters will act in ways that expose their past experiences. Character histories are important, but don’t need to be complicated. Look for elements that will create desires and conflicts, the essence of any plot. You need to describe the following:
your character’s personality
a quick timeline of your character’s past, present and future

5. Thinking about character motivation.
Write three short paragraphs. Each will a single event from the character’s life told from three different perspectives:
Telling the story to a stranger. How does your character want to be perceived? How much information are they going to reveal?
Telling the story to a close friend. How will they confide in them?
Telling the story to themselves. What would they never tell to anyone else.

6. Now you are ready to write a comic script
and also ready to teach your pupils
how to perform this difficult and beautiful art!
SUCCESS!