Designing the Look

Ben Balistreri is an amazing character designer (his work is pictured above) and has worked on countless TV animated shows such as Danny Phantom, Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, Wander Over Yonder, etc. He's also worked on a few Disney movies such as Brother Bear 2. Character designers like him have a lot of talent for creating characters. I'm hoping to gain some kind of character designing skills while here at school, but for now I'll be focusing on finals (pray for me). Character designers bring a lot to the table in animation.
Their designs is what most of the crew refers to for whatever they're working on. Storyboard artists are shown these designs and insert these characters into their panels. Layout artists add in these characters as well. Most importantly, the animators are able to animate them after seeing all angles of the character. This position is pretty self explanatory, but it really is an important feature for the production of a movie/TV show.
When they're not designing their own original characters, they're using the direction from those who wrote the movie/TV show. They'll describe the character in detail (or maybe leave the detail to the character designers) before giving them the responsibility to design the character. Of course, the first designs they come up with aren't always the ones they go with but they're given freedom to share and later revise. Many character designs are gone through before picking a satisfying look. Sometimes they'll add or take away some details of the character later on.
A lot of illustrators will use different methods to designing characters. Some are influenced by real life people they know that maybe relate to the character. They'll use outside figures as a guide when developing the look. Some actually will maybe take original characters they've designed in the past and make them look similar. Mainly, though, a lot of it has to do with the influence from the writers describing the character. Symbols are used and obvious traits from previous characters. If the character is written as shy and reserved, they may make this person look small and curled in on itself all the time. It honestly depends on the character designer.
They're awesome at what they do and I'm hoping to start creating characters of my own that will maybe end up somewhere where people can enjoy it. Next topic is what I'll hopefully be going into so get ready for me to start gushing over this: Storyboarding!