Character Creation: Free Courses

Posted on by LittleFears

Howdy gang! A very short Monday post this week. We’ve been talking on Twitter this weekend about character creation. Mostly because I’m farting them out left right and centre at the moment thanks to Inktober.

Point of the post, I came across two free courses this week on Skillshare. One from the WattPad team and one from Sarita Kolhatkar of Guild Wars 2. Both are 100% free. Sign up, skip anything that asks you to pay and take up the courses.

The Creative Writer’s Toolkit: Writing a Character Study

Starting with a blank slate is daunting, and in this class, Lindsey shares her favorite tool for overcoming writer’s block and starting your writing process: the character study.

This is a creative exercise that will help you develop characters that feel fresh and true to your writing style.
At the same time, this is also a practical exercise, giving you an informed starting place for the rest of your story, poem, or novel.
Once you have a character study, you can use it to write whatever fiction you want!

This class will inspire you to look at your everyday encounters and simple interactions as helpful starting points for developing a unique character. It’s perfect for everyone new to writing as well as writers looking to broaden their creative writing toolkit.

Course Link: http://skl.sh/2swO3FT

Character Design – Bring Your Imagination To Life!

Grew up watching Disney movies? Love drawing and storytelling? The objective of this class is teach you the various processes and Photoshop techniques on creating a character from start to finish, following a detailed process from thumbnail concepts to a completed digital illustration with lighting and color, perfect for your portfolio.

This class is great for anyone with a passion for drawing, painting and a love for Disney Pixar movies, and have often asked themselves, “how do I make my characters look like that?”

Course Link: http://skl.sh/2x1hktT

16 thoughts on “Character Creation: Free Courses”

    1. Aha, I had no hand in creating either. I just came across them while we were tweeting about character creation and thought I’d forward the links on. 🙂

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      1. I started out many moons ago as an illustrator. There were no computers then. As soon as I got my first Apple, that talent dwindled away to a faster paced market and here we are. I’m writing a few books right now. The link was just perfect timing if anything ever was! Gracias!! (no, I’m not Spanish either) haha. ?

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      2. I love computers, and I too stepped away from paper and ink long ago. Last year I rediscovered my love of doodling beards and moustaches on people in the newspapers. A year later, the Fears arrived on the internet, and here I am. 🙂

        Would recommend browsing all the Skillshares classes. A lot of good free ones on the site, and you can filter by free and premium too.

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      3. Wow, parallel lives! That’s cool as hell. What accent do you have? Oh maybe one day you’ll hear mine. I believe Youtube is in my future. Ugh. ?

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      4. Cheers! Voice comes from London. Urgh to YouTube? Not a fan of YT? Consider one of the other video networks. I’ve worked in social media (among other things) for years, and I gotta say, if you like a network you’re far more likely to do well on it. Pick the networks you enjoy the most. That’s why I have gotten to 11,000 followers between Medium and Ello alone, and less than 100 on Facebook haha.

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      5. NOT a fan of Facebook. Nope. Not hanging myself. Though don’t we open up to it every time we post or share in public? Lord knows humans can be seriously flawed. I miss my rosey colored outlook. Life will do this to a person. I remember thinking all people were good. To some extent I think that is possible. Maybe those people are outside playing tennis or skateboarding right now. Haha

        Love the accent. ??

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      6. Thank you for the accent compliment. 🙂

        Yes and no to opening ourselves to networks. I share in full to my main networks I like. The whole post, nothing cut out. Facebook, G+ and LinkedIn all get an autoshare from WordPress. A link at best. I’m still very optimistic about people. I reckon most of the yoof of today are smarter than they are given credit for and pay far less attention to social media than marketers claim. 🙂

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  5. Characters are everywhere. Pick three and you’ll get nine just changing their shirts and hair. The beauty of yours are that they aren’t stereotypes. In that I mean a serpent isn’t, well, you know, a snake. Cloud is fluffy but not FAT. Building characters out the deconstructed pieces of the line in front of you at the wine and spirits store on a Friday noonish could take forever. And WTF are people doing with all those bottles of hard liquor at noon?

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    1. Cheers Phil! I’ll be honest, Serpent gets referred to as a snake in a couple of upcoming stories. It’s not dwelled on though. Part of the conversation came about because I said my most important aspect of a personality was to be relatively consistent. Beyond that, the likes, loves, looks and life of a character can be anything. A single trait should not dominate and define a character but they should be a mix of things or they just become cliches. So out of maybe 50 stories up to that point that features Serpent, only 2 refer to her as a snake. The rest suggest she’s good friends with Hydra and Red. She’s often alone and delivers punchlines about her confused love live. Her being somehow snake like never dominates her persona, it’s just something she is and not who she is.

      Also, it was me at the off-license at noon… Sorry! 😛

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