Character Design & Comics
*This course is intended for lower elementary students
Class Schedule
Tuesdays 4-4:50 pm PST
September 15, September 22, September 29,
October 6, October 13, October 20
Note: Classes are listed in PST, click below to convert time to your time zone.
Course Overview
What makes a character feel real? What makes us care about their story? And how can a few drawings communicate an entire world?
In this six-week course, students will develop original characters and learn how artists use design, storytelling, and worldbuilding to bring those characters to life. They'll explore how personality can be expressed through appearance, how characters change through the stories they experience, and how visual choices can reveal relationships, conflicts, and motivations.
Each week will focus on a different element of character and visual storytelling, including character design, personality and development, worldbuilding, story structure, and the fundamentals of comic composition. Students will explore how professional artists use panels, pacing, composition, dialogue, and visual details to guide an audience through a story.
By the end of the course, students will have developed an original character, a world for that character to inhabit, and a short comic that brings their ideas together.
What Students Will Learn:
• Character design fundamentals
• Character development and personality
• Intro to IP creation and worldbuilding
• Basics of comic panels and storytelling
• Drawing simple comic pages
Student Experience
Inventor
Artist
Inventor
Your Teacher: Michael Buffington Jr.
Michael Buffington Jr. is a concept artist and art director with over 20 years of experience across games, animation, and film. His credits include Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 3) at Lucasfilm Animation, along with leadership roles at Gambit Games, Pixelberry, and Block Tackle.
A veteran educator, he has spent two decades building top-ranked concept art programs at the university level and training students to develop industry-ready portfolios.
Through his teaching, Michael is committed to helping aspiring artists build strong fundamentals, creative confidence, and the skills needed to succeed in real-world production environments.
Check out some of Michael’s artwork: https://www.drawaholic1124.com/
