Artists Behind ‘Frozen,’ ‘Corpse Bride,’ And ‘Up’ Teach Character Design In New Course From The Creators U

When Pixar’s Albert Lozano was assigned to design Ellie for Up, he thought it would be easy: a human character with only seven minutes of screen time.

Over a couple of days, he gathered references and sketched some options. Review after review, though, he didn’t get the reaction he expected. None of his designs seemed to express the emotion the director was looking for.

With the pressure building, Lozano decided to churn out more work, but still, nothing landed. An assignment that was supposed to take just a few weeks had stretched into months. Was it a lack of drawing skills? Would a change of environment help his creativity flow? He threw his pencils and paper on the floor and lay down, trying to produce more and more drawings. Then something unexpected happened that would change how he thought about character design — and remind him why the first word in this art form is “character.”

The full story, along with Lozano’s drawings and the lesson he learned that day, is part of The Art of Character Design, a new online course from The Creators U. The course explores the approaches of five leading character designers to an art form that sits at the intersection of story, animation, and design.

Joe Moshier explores principles such as story, caricature, structure, and shape, which have helped him work across a wide range of styles on films including Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Bolt, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Rise of the Guardians, as well as create his distinctive designs for The Emperor’s New Groove.

Carlos Grangel takes an in-depth look at the production of Corpse Bride, sharing how Tim Burton first contacted his studio and the extensive work that went into creating the film’s characters and props. In another lesson, he discusses his approach to shape language through his work on films including Madagascar, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

Bill Schwab, whose character design credits include Frozen, Moana, Wreck-It Ralph, and Encanto, takes on the challenge of designing original characters for the course. He demonstrates his process step by step, from initial idea to final design, exploring concepts such as contrast and “more is more” along the way.

Throughout the course, Borja Montoro (Zootopia, Tarzan, The Wild Robot) shares practical drawing tips for tackling hands, hair, clothing, expressions, and more.

Lozano also revisits one of the most difficult assignments of his career: designing Sadness for Inside Out. How do you begin to design an emotion, especially one as multifaceted as sadness? By retracing that process, he hopes to inspire others to keep pursuing the character in character design.

The course combines these lessons with practical assignments and demonstrations, including the designers’ approaches to creating original characters based on familiar archetypes: villains, wise mentors, comic relief characters, and heroes.

Get a free preview of the course at TheCreatorsU.com.