Workshop: Digital Character Making

Friday, 18 December | 10:45 AM - 2:30 PM | Room 414/415

This workshop introduces a new concept of "character making", based on literal information and digital technology, and asks participants to practice how to use the new method to create usable characters. The definition of character making is to not only design a character, but also to plan how to exploit the character, how to tranform your idea to literal information, how to develop a story, how to collect visual information and assemble a digital scrap book, and how to edit and morph your image. Each of these steps requires creative thinking and option testing.

The workshop begins with a general introduction to the character-making concept, then proceeds step by step through the development process. Attendees should bring their own laptop computers.

Instructor(s)

Mitsuru Kaneko
Tokyo University of Technology

Instructor Bio(s)

Mitsuru Kaneko
Mitsuru Kaneko is a professor, writer, and industry consultant in the Graduate School of Media Science at the Tokyo University of Technology (TUT). He began his career at Fuji Telecasting network, where he developed, directed, and produced network TV programs such as "Mother and the Earth" (an award-winning documentary at the Art Festival of Japan) and "Kogarashi Monjiro" (a highly rated TV movie series). In the 1960s, he was a student at the Cinema and Television School of the University of Southern California while he was working at MGM Studios in Culver City, California. In 1981, he opened Japan's first computer graphics production studio, JCGL, where he produced "The Yearling" and "Lensman". 

He received his PhD in computer animation systems at the Graduate School of Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1997. During this period, he co-founded Metrolight Studios in Los Angeles. The studio received an Academy Award for special effects on "Total Recall" and an Emmy Award for" ABC World of Discovery".  In 2007, he received the CG Japan Award from the Society for Art and Science. He is now president of the Digital Content Institute (DCIn) and a committee chief of education and training at VIPO (Visual Industry Promotion Organization). He is the author of Introduction of Content Creation Technology ( Born-Digital, 2007) and Golden Rules of Scenario Making ( Born-Digital, 2008), and the editor of the Japanese version of Movie Business Book, Third Edition.