Character Design Mentorship | Aron Elekes

In this module, learn the fundamental skills to design immersive worlds.
By the module’s end, you will be equipped to craft convincing worlds that captivate audiences, bringing characters to life and enable you to construct compelling worlds.

Task Overview: Create your world from scratch by defining its key aspects such as history, culture, geography and its people.

Theme: Discover the importance of establishing a cohesive theme that sets the tone and atmosphere for your world. Learn techniques to evoke emotions, create a sense of wonder with your audience through effective visual storytelling.

Game Design: Explore aligning your world with gameplay mechanics, ensuring a seamless integration with your design that enhances the overall player experience.

Narrative Pillars: Learn to design impactful storytelling for your character design. Develop compelling personalities with effective visual cues.

1. Task Overview
2. Theme
3. Game Design
4. Narrative Pillars

Pro + Massive

Engage in dynamic brainstorming sessions, collaborative exercises with guidance from Aron Elekes. This module will empower you to approach brainstorming with confidence, contributing to the growth and success of any creative team.

Collaborate Meaningfully: Explore techniques for effective communication, active listening, and leveraging the strengths of team members. Learn in a supportive environment that encourages trust, openness, and useful feedback.

Mindset Development: Overcome self-imposed limitations. Develop strategies to cultivate a growth mindset, where challenges are seen as stepping stones towards improvement.

1. Collaborate Effectively
2. Mindset

Pro + Massive

Aaron Elekes will guide you to get clear insight into his workflow and improve your composition skills to resonate with your audience. Train to maintain efficiency throughout your artistic process.

Structure: Establish a structured workflow by organizing ideas, setting clear objectives and narrow key elements in your work.

Analyze: Inspire artistic growth by venturing out of your comfort zone, and experiment with effective techniques.

1. Structure
2. Exploration

Pro + Massive

Enhance your research skills for character design in this module. Join Aaron as he share tactics on information gathering, impactful mood board creation, diverse reference material collection, and effective prioritization.

Keywords: Identify descriptive keywords unique to your design. This will help your characters stand out and captivate audiences.

Mood Board: Discover how to create a mood board that encapsulates your character concept, giving you a robust visual direction.

Reference Materials: Elevate your designs through diverse, compelling imagery, enriching your design and setting you apart.

Prioritize: Sharpen your focus and streamline your design process into three key pillars to make informed choices throughout your creative process.

Whether your goal is joining top studios or making your mark in concept art, this module will equip you with essential research techniques to create refined character designs.

1. Keywords
2. Mood Board
3. Reference Materials
4. Learn to Prioritiize

Pro + Massive

In this module, Aron Elekes will guide you through character design fundamentals, refine your craft and unleash your creative potential.

Anatomy: Dive into form, structure, and explore the rhythm and proportions of the human body. Incorporate abstract shapes into captivating body silhouettes.

Pose: Break free from basic poses to express character personality through dynamic posing. Utilize engaging poses to enhance readability, align with the character’s design and communicate key aspects of the character’s story.

Style: Realize importance of style in character design to infuse your designs with a unique artistic voice, and ensure a smooth transition from initial concepts to player-facing materials.

1. Anatomy
2. Pose
3. Style

Pro + Massive

This module will help you master visual development by embracing explorative shape language and engineering functionality in character design.

Shape Language: Construct recurring visual elements and basic shapes to create character identity and visual cohesion.

Functionality: Adapt designs to fit end products, from illustrations to 3D models, and optimize them for the target platform.

Character Concept Design: Iterate selective visual elements, and refine character concepts without being tied to a single idea.

Narrative Alignment: Find harmony with the game design and narrative, emphasizing the role of exceptional visual storytelling.

1. Shape language
2. Functionality
3. Character Concept Design
4. Narrative

Pro + Massive

Engage with Aron Elekes in this module to study rendering techniques, create impactful callout sheets, develop style guides, and gain useful career insights.

Rendering: Convey materials and textures clearly within your designs, enhancing visual impact.

Callout Sheet: Build callout sheets to organize and present key details for seamless project progression.

Style Guide: Understand style guides’ role in achieving visual consistency. Compile and establish key elements to capture the essence of your character designs.

Career Advice: Gain insights on portfolio building, understanding industry dynamics, current trends, potential career paths, and interview strategies to stay ahead of competition.

1. Rendering
2. Callout Sheet
3. Style Guide
4. Career Advice

Pro + Massive

Learn how to structure your project so that you seamlessly fit into modern art environments in larger studios. Some aspects of a professional artist are less known, such as naming conventions, color spaces, File sharing, and delivery.

Aron Elekes will help you understand what it takes to deliver on time.

1. Problem Solving
2. Client requirements
3. Reference management
4. Layer structure
5. Naming Conventions

Pro + Massive

How to get hired for a studio or dream project can be intimidating. There are several mindsets to adopt when approaching work as a professional artist.

*This module serves as a bonus and will be conducted by Christopher Schiefer (CEO) to improve your current work routine. This module will only be held upon your initiative response after completing all months.

1. Company Hierarchies
2. Email Outreach
3. Outsourcing

only Massive

Exposure can be beneficial to help attract clients and improve your international attention.

*This module will be conducted by the internal team based on the achieved level of polish at the end of your mentorship.

1. Interviews
2. Power of Editors
3. Understanding Feature articles

only Massive

Learn how to structure your portfolio to maximize the impression of your efforts.
LinkedIn and a proper presentation of your personal and professional work can help stand out.

*This module will be conducted by the internal team after finishing all acquired mentorship months with Aron Elekes

1. Understanding Client Needs
2. Naming Conventions
3. File Delivery
4. Structural Mindset

only Massive