Character Design

Character Design: The Design Process and Cut Out Characters

Character Design

Time to dig into character design. Below in the download section you will find a wide variety of cut out character designs that you can download, print o! and build. Or you can design and create your own characters. Be sure to take a look at the designs below as the di!erent character designs will give you ideas about how to construct them. To build these cut out characters you will want to have a few things on hand.

Creating Cut Out Characters

Here is a list of the tools and materials you will want to have on hand for creating the included Cut Out Character designs (Listed Below)

Tools and Materials

  • Card Stock (To print out your designs)
  • Scissors
  • Packing Tape
  • Sticky Tack/Poster Putty (To join pieces of character together)

Bonus Video: Cut Out Character Construction

Download Section

Here you can download a variety of Cut Out style characters. Print them out on cardstock, then follow the instructions from the video above. Below are also diagrams of how the characters are assembled.

Cut Out Instructions
Knight 1
Knight 2
Knight 3
Ghost Character
Fish One (Facing Right)
Fish One (Facing Left)
Fish Two and Three
Rocket Scene

Instructions

  1. Cut out all the shapes.
  2. Place a small amount of the Sticky Tack on the puppet pieces where indicated by a yellow X. This is what will hold the pieces together.
  3. Assemble all the pieces as indicated below.

There are multiple versions of the arms and legs and eyes included to allow you to change the direction the cut out puppet character is facing, and to change his expression.

The Knight
Fish One
Fish Two
Fish Three
Ghost

Character Design: Creating Clay Characters

Clay Character Design

Designing characters in clay is an exciting challenge. For characters that you want to animate,  use an oil based clay. The brand Van Akin is an excellent choice to use. Both the Plastalina and Claytoon clays shown are great.

Character Design: Set and Prop Design

Sculpey III: A polymer clay that hardens when baked in an oven.