Chapter 3: Turnarounds, Orthos, Pose & Expression Sheets

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Turnarounds, Orthos, Pose & Expression Sheets

From Brief to Package: The Character Concept Pipeline (Ideation → Iteration → Finals → Handoff)

Turnarounds, orthographic views, and performance sheets (pose and expression) are the pages that convert a winning concept into a buildable, animatable, and marketable asset. They do more than confirm appearance; they encode proportion logic, joint ranges, deformation expectations, equipment interfaces, and even camera strategy. When these pages are authored with the next team in mind, they radically reduce rework and make downstream craft—modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, UI, audio, lighting—faster and clearer. This article lays out a practical approach for both exploration‑side concept artists and production‑side artists, showing how to evolve from ideation and iteration into finals and handoff without losing the character’s silhouette grammar.

The starting point is the brief and the silhouette package approved earlier. You should restate the essential constraints in the file header—target platform, camera modes, rig family, height in engine units, and any dominant role verbs—because they shape every view and performance test that follows. Even if the turnaround page looks like a static poster, think of it as a dynamic spec, and write intent notes that explain why certain gaps, clearances, and rhythms were preserved. If a cape must keep five centimeters of ground clearance at neutral, or if shoulder spikes must not intrude into a backpack collision volume, say so plainly on the sheet.

A production‑grade turnaround begins with a neutral stance that is orthographic‑friendly. Feet are placed on a common ground plane, knees soft, arms slightly abducted from the torso to preserve negative space, hands relaxed but open enough to reveal palm and finger lengths, and spine neutral. The front, back, and side are rendered at equal scale with a visible scale bar and head count, and the top view is included whenever hair, hats, shoulder architecture, wings, or backpacks affect read or collision. You should keep values grouped and color minimal so that the page functions as a form document rather than a painting; what matters here is massing, edge flow, and negative space consistency. Asymmetries are a frequent source of rework, so display them explicitly with mirrored callouts, noting which details are mirrored in production to preserve UV efficiency and which must stay asymmetric for identity or gameplay.

Orthographic pages translate the turnaround into build instructions. Where a turnaround proves form, the ortho prescribes it. At a minimum, the orthos lock critical measurements: total height, shoulder span, hip span, pelvis height, leg length, head height, hand span, and foot length, all in engine units. Landmark positions are marked with small ticks—acromion, lateral epicondyle, ASIS, patella, malleolus—because modelers and riggers use these to place joints and derive deformation ranges. Equipment interfaces are indicated with socket coordinates relative to the pelvis or spine, not to the viewport, so they survive scene scaling. If the character has soft‑body regions like belly, chest, or cape intersections, sketch the intended deformation silhouette at extremes: a gentle bend, a hard crouch, an arm raise. These ortho notes preserve the design’s posture under animation pressure.

Orthos also resolve surface transitions that silhouettes hide. A clean edge often conceals a complex material join, so draw small sectional insets for ambiguous interfaces—collar into cuirass, pauldron into deltoid, boot tongue into shin guard. Where you anticipate cloth simulation, define a seam path and a natural fold origin so the garment can be patterned and later tuned for collision. If a non‑human or hybrid anatomy is involved, confirm digit count and spacing, articulation axes for tails or wings, and the range of motion that preserves readability. Rigging and animation will thank you for each dimension you lock early, and surfacing will thank you for each seam you have placed with gravity and motion in mind.

Pose sheets are where intent meets physics. Their function is not to show off anatomy; it is to prove that the character performs its verbs in camera: brace, lunge, aim, cast, guard, sprint, idle, interact. A good pose sheet couples one hero pose per verb with two supporting frames that show anticipation and follow‑through. Keep values simplified to foreground silhouette and weight transfer, and draw contact patches clearly so animators can feel footfalls and center‑of‑gravity travel. If the character relies on equipment, include interaction poses that keep grip shapes readable and wrists in sane ranges; overextended wrists produce attractive drawings but unbuildable rigs. For games that feature crowd readability, downscale each pose to a few percentage points of on‑screen height and verify that role and intention remain unambiguous. The most useful pose sheets also include a “stress test” row: a crouch with cloak drape, a leap with cape spread, a twist that risks shoulder clipping, each annotated with expectations for collision volumes and cloth pins.

Expression sheets translate a face into a controllable library. Begin by anchoring a neutral that honors the skull’s planes and the approved proportions, then run a compact set informed by FACS: inner brow raise, brow lower, cheek raise, lip corner pull, lip press, jaw drop, lip suck, and eye squeeze. You do not need to label every action unit, but you should separate upper‑face and lower‑face drivers when possible, because rigging often splits controllers. Show three intensities per emotion so that the animator can pick a range that feels alive in camera without fighting the sculpt. If the project targets multiple cameras, frame expression busts in those views: a slightly high angle and mid‑distance read differently than a tight hero shot. For stylized projects, align your shapes to the style guide’s mouth corners, tooth exposure, and sclera proportions so appeal survives rig simplification. Where scars, facial hair, or ornaments affect deformation, draw a small inset to demonstrate how they compress or stretch under expression.

Throughout iteration, keep a disciplined feedback loop with modeling, rigging, and animation. Exploration‑side artists should use early pose and expression probes as discovery tools, not as finished art; the goal is to learn where silhouette or proportion needs nudging to keep performance clean. Production‑side artists should overlay rig proxies or quick block‑ins and return annotated screenshots into the same PSD, so the history of decisions lives where everyone can see it. This way, the final pages inherit tested solutions and the cost of surprises is minimized. It is especially helpful to run a “camera pass” on the turnarounds, posing, and expression pages, compositing them roughly over background plates from the actual game. If everything reads in those composites, odds are high the design survives in‑engine conditions.

Finalization is the moment when the pages graduate from exploratory to prescriptive. The turnaround locks, the orthos carry numeric ratios and socket coordinates, the pose sheet displays a verified verb set, and the expression sheet lays out a rig‑friendly range of motions. Values are grouped into large, medium, and small masses with disciplined clarity, and surface materials are indicated only where they change deformation behavior—soft to hard, rigid to flexible—not as a color render. If marketing needs a taste of color, place swatches and a tiny color bust off to the side rather than converting the entire page into a painting; doing so preserves attention on form and movement, which matter most for handoff.

A professional handoff packages these pages so downstream teams can build without guesswork. Provide high‑resolution PNGs or layered PSDs with clean, labeled groups: measurements, sockets, deformation guides, equipment primitives, expression rigs, and pose verbs each on dedicated layers. Include a short change log that explains what shifted between versions and why, and name files predictably following studio standards. Attach a proportion summary that restates the locked ratios in engine units and a brief “do not break” list that calls out the negative spaces and clearances that must survive armor tiers, skins, or LOD reductions. Finally, include a contact note that specifies who on concept owns intent questions and who on production owns implementation questions; this reduces ambiguity once the pages begin their journey across departments.

Common failure modes repeat across studios and are avoidable. The first is over‑rendered turnarounds that obscure edge clarity and make measurement uncertain; a gorgeous page that hides proportions slows modeling more than it helps. The second is orthos that contradict the turnaround because proportions drifted during cleanup; a scale bar and head count on every view cure this quickly. The third is pose sheets full of cinematic gestures that do not survive gameplay scale; the cure is to test at distance and in the shipping camera before calling any pose final. The fourth is expression sheets that are all “moments” and no ranges; grounding your set in a small FACS‑informed library keeps rigging sane and acting flexible. Whenever a failure appears, trace it to the earliest page that could have prevented it and adjust your template for the next character.

For both concept and production, a shared definition of done makes these pages predictable. For exploration, done means the turnaround, ortho, pose, and expression sheets all exist at readability quality, have passed camera and distance checks, and include intent notes. For production, done means the pages carry numeric measurements, socket coordinates, deformation and collision expectations, and that a rig proxy has validated the pose and expression ranges without red flags. For the project, done means downstream teams can build, rig, animate, light, simulate cloth, and prepare marketing comps with minimal back‑and‑forth, and that the character remains consistent across skins and LODs.

When authored this way, turnarounds, orthos, and performance sheets are not bureaucratic steps; they are the connective tissue between inspiration and implementation. They preserve the silhouette grammar established in ideation, sharpen it through iteration, codify it in finals, and broadcast it in handoff. The reward is a character that looks like your art across cameras and contexts, because the pages taught every team how to honor the design’s shape language from the first pixel to the final frame.