Read the script and collect ideas from other members of the production team during technical and creative meetings. These ideas generally come from the director, producer and heads of various production departments. This information is crucial when you start to draw your 3-D characters. Considering all of the ideas helps avoid major revisions on your work.
Make your character design, an illustration of a character's body features and personal effects. Start by making a sketch of your animated character. You can do this by hand or directly by using the computer to draw a computer-generated image, commonly referred to as a CGI. Technically, you actually combine both hand drawings and CGI when making your character design. If you prefer the traditional hand-drawing route for your initial sketch, you would scan it after, so you can polish it with any image-editing program. Complete all necessary details, colors and textures on your character design including facial features, skin, hair, body frame, clothes and accessories.
Draw a character turnaround, a single document dedicated to a specific character's front, three quarters, profile and back views. You can do this by hand, using the computer or a combination of both. Depending on the needs of an animation project, this can show four or more angles of the character in a single pose. This guides the other animation artists on the accuracy of your character's details. Because 3-D animation allows movement of a character in different angles and directions, it is important to have a character turnaround to cover the look of the character from the front, back and sides.
Create a character design comparison sheet, a single document showing a project's major characters' variations in size, color schemes, and usually, even their personalities. You can do this by hand, using the computer or a combination of both. This document works similar to a character turnaround, except that it shows a number of significant characters of the animation on a single document. This becomes an important reference guide to make sure that all characters have accurate sizes in relation to other characters they interact with.
Make a 3-D model based on the final character design. In most professional animation projects, this is done by a separate artist called the 3-D modeler. In some independent productions and most personal projects where multi-tasking is more apparent, the character designer would usually work as the 3-D modeler as well. Making a 3-D model requires very technical skills on 3-D modeling using a specific 3-D modeling software or a 3-D animation software that has 3-D modeling capability.
Making a 3-D model prepares your character for 3-D animation. Your character design and character turnaround serve as guides when creating the model. However, this model doesn't readily transform the character design into a full-fledged 3-D character right away. A 3-D model is primarily made up of a number of dots or points connected together to create lines, curves and surfaces -- reflecting the shape of your intended animated character in 3-D form. These points serve as bones and joints of your character so that it can be moved or animated during the 3-D animation process. It works like a skeletal system with accurate points that the animator can move accordingly.
Turn over your completed 3-D model, along with the character design, character turnaround, character design comparison sheet and other production materials to other artists who will continue working on the animation production. The other production materials typically include concept artworks for the project, expression sheets showing each character's key expressions in every sheet, storyboard, among many other production artworks and documents.
The next part of the production polishes the final look of the character by covering the 3-D model with the character's physical attributes, as required by the character design. The artists who will animate the project are called the 3-D animators. They are the ones tasked to move your 3-D model according to the requirements of the story.