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[Evan Cheng]: Character design, you know, that has life, you can kind of see what their backstory is. It's kind of like when I go to a coffeeshop and I can observe people and you can kind of tell, you know, what their story is, and I think a good character design is that. If a person has designed a character they've thought of that whole backstory. They've thought of the personality and characteristics, so that comes out. I'm Evan Cheng, I'm a character designer with Sesame Workshop in New York City. Every character is made out of lines initially, but I think there was one point that really taught me to pay attention to lines. I was coming out of school. I went to a Pasadena Animation Convention and I went there with my portfolio and I went to all these studios and a lot of them told me that my characters don't have weight, so I kind of had to go back and figure out what that meant. It's the details of lines of how you either overlap or how you curve a line to give it stress it can give your character weight and it will make your character exist on a page. If you don't do that then your character is floating, so that was a very pivotal point of how I looked at creating a character. I think I went to art because that was kind of what I got praised for even when I was a little kid and as a result I did it more. It was what made me feel better, so just from doing it more I got better at it. Ewah, I initially used as therapy to work through challenging emotional times or even positive times to kind of spend time with that specific emotion. I have a satisfaction of finding the proper line. You fight for that line. You fight for that line that feels right and feels like that's just right, so as I worked through a negative emotion it was being counteracted with a positive satisfaction greater than the negative emotion. Ewah was actually what my grandmom called me because she couldn't pronounce my name. She couldn't pronounce my name Evan so she just called me Ewah. I like to put my clothes, the clothes that I own on this character because I know the details. I know how it sits on a structure, so for me, in terms of drawing it's just less research and just being familiar and I think it makes the character more believable. I wanted to put him through some pain so this is the worst pain that I felt actually making impact on ground with my face, so that's what I did with him and thought about what of that moment made it painful. This pose was anger. I think I was stressed out about something and something wasn't happening and it was like hitting a wall, so I lived in that moment and imagined a pose that represented that for me. Whenever I kind of explore these feelings, these moments in time, I try to be in that character and figure out like what can push it, what little details can lend and push the feeling. I'm living the moment through the character. When the character first started I was heavy details working through things and needed time spent and as these kind of developed into a more pleasant character I did quicker poses with him. Now I kind of use them as part of my life. For this one he's feeling in love. This one actually has softer lines. The simple line that goes past the palm shows the weight of the head on the hand that connects to people more. This was the pursuing process of my now wife. I actually made a character of her and points of our lives that kind of stuck out so for me its evolved from a character that I wanted to put through pain and suffering to a character that is just a part of me, is part of my life and has become a crucial part of my life. 30s actually shape what I do on a daily basis. They were inspired by websites of comic book artists and there was one artist that did 90 minute drawings. I couldn't afford 90 minutes out of my work day, so I did 30 minutes taking Sesame characters and incorporating something that inspired me that morning. Inspiration comes from anywhere. As I went on I would put them on my door and people saw them. That was before like Instagram or anything that big, so I just put it on my door. My boss at the time, Nancy inspired me and encouraged me to develop it into a line and some of the designs were developed into, you know, whole character lines that are used on products and things like that, so my job went from just doing corrections and keeping characters on model to redesigning our characters, iconic characters into a different style or a different theme. It's really shaped my workday and made it more interesting and rewarding for sure. With Sesame their characters are set already, so if I'm redesigning their character into a different style or a different theme the way I approach that would be to do a lot of research first of what that theme is. If there's an image that pops out at me, you know, I might draw from that. If it's just a specific design, not a specific theme, then I'll explore that design more, and then go to pencil, maybe some markers. There's a lot of rough sketches. A lot of stuff that gets thrown out. From there it's just refining, refining, refining. I like to stay with a design for a while and make sure that I still like them after a day, and for Sesame for products everything needs to be vectorized so I would take that to an illustrator. In terms of personal projects 2Bs is what I've been working on the most. I wanted to work on a line of characters that I could do whatever I wanted with, you know, work with limitations that I wanted to put on it and challenges that I wanted to put on it. They don't have mouths, they don't have arms. I wanted to limit and challenge myself to get likeness even without some of the most expressive parts of the characters. The moment when a likeness takes shape it's fascinating and it's fun. The challenge for me to keep it simple and still keep the character there and bring emotions out of minimal details I enjoy that challenge. I'm still surprised when I go and try to create a likeness. Moving an eye, moving a shape slightly, and having a likeness pop out really delights me. When I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons I just enjoyed the shapes and the movements and how they captured emotion. Nowadays that's what I try to put in my drawings. I try to capture that life, the life that animation has, but in still-form. There's people that really sketch a lot. I mean if they're sitting still their hand needs to be sketching something. I can't say I'm one of those people, but I like creating something out of nothing. To look at a clean piece of paper and make something that makes sense that makes sense to other people I can't get enough of it and I would miss it if I didn't do it.