Urban Assembly Gateway
About the 2025 Character Design Program at Urban Assembly Gateway
Creative Art Works’ Character Design Program is a paid internship offered at four NYC Career and Technical Education High Schools. Interns are challenged to create their own fully-realized characters with backstories, personality traits, and strengths and weaknesses.
This year, the curriculum suggested three themes to help interns shape their creative vision: Action, Adventure, and Drama, with an extra “Miscellaneous” theme. As the program progressed, some students naturally evolved their characters beyond these original themes, reshaping stories, motivations, and designs in ways that reflected their growing skills and imagination.
Action
Interns: Aaron Gambrell, Abdullah Azmi, Aicha Diawara, Alexander Valerio, Alvaro Dolores, Fariza Rahman, Jah Mier Manaigo, Ndozi Adewole-Jimenez, Walter Lane
Featured Character Designs
Andras
by Alexander Valerio
Andras was born with extraordinary alchemical abilities into a world that has outlawed all alchemists after they ruined the world with their arcane magic. Andras lost her mother at the start of the great destruction and then her father when he tried to save her from Anti-Alchemy Law Enforcement. She adopts a pup named Trick that has an adaptive ability. Cursed and hunted, she explores the world with the twin magnums left by her father while collecting all herbs and gaining knowledge of her alchemist abilities.
Dove
by Fariza Rahman
Dove is a vigilante living in a sci-fi dystopia who cares deeply about nature. He is a very creative, curious, and strong-willed person, willing to do whatever it takes when it comes to a cause he believes in. He mostly works alone, because he has gone after many high-profile people who would take revenge on him by hurting the people he cares for. His headphones are made from the parts of a dead robot, which was his first kill.
Eni
by Ndozi Adewole-Jimenez
Eni was born into a high-class family in the Yoken kingdom. She lives with the high council families and other citizens who can afford to pay for their rent while those who live outside the kingdom are starving. After fighting off the advances of a member of one of the high council families, she is unjustly put on “trial” and sentenced to exile. When everything looks hopeless, Eni finds the Zero Yoken, the ancient yokai weapon that will defeat the powerful oppressive kingdom.
G.E.O.F.F
by Walter Lane
G.E.O.F.F (Gardening & Extermination Operation for Flora & Fauna) is a robot designed to protect and take care of its creator’s massive garden and hedge maze. One day, he wished to be able to show emotions, so his creator fitted him with 4 claws, 2 on either side of his head, fitted with crayons which allow him to draw his emotions on his face. He is powered by a sentient flower in his stomach, and has to water it regularly to stay alive. G.E.O.F.F fights to exterminate all the possessed plants and insects and defeat all the cultists in order to restore the garden back to its original state
Link
by Aaron Gambrell
Link is a sentient hotdog who has been enhanced by chemicals at a factory. He uses his new abilities to protect the sentient food of New York City with an arsenal of hotdog based weaponry
Sausage Sally
by Abdullah Azmi
Captain Sizzla is a sausage who escaped from a meat shop because she didn’t want to be eaten. She found a big sea where everyone was hungry. Sizzla felt sad for the people until she found a boat with a magic gun that shoots food. She made a crew with meat friends and together they sail the high seas fighting mean guys.
Sasha Sinclair
by Jah Mier Manaigo
Sasha was born into an apocalyptic world, plagued by a mysterious virus that causes people to turn into bloodthirsty monsters who seek nothing but to kill and infect others. Sasha has been forced to learn how to fight and defend herself from these demons. Sasha is immune to the virus, but is she the key to ending the plague or the reason it can never end?
Summer Green
by Aicha Diawara
Summer Green grew up in a small village where everyone depends on their farm to make a living. This becomes impossible when a famine starts because of some unknown creature in the forest that is chemically destroying the soil, preventing them from growing crops.
Poses, Expression Sheets & Story Boards
Adventure
Interns: Brian Teruya, Ellen Tan, Kaz Wilks, Marcus Amezquita
Featured Character Designs
Alecc Newton
by Kaz Wilks
Alecc Newton is a daring, extreme, and gnarly skateboarder who is willing to go all out to win the 25th-Annual Derby Brook X-treme Wheels… just as soon as he figures out how to ollie, and kickflip, and balance on the board. It’s a little embarrassing not being able to skate well when you are born into a mega-famous family filled with professional skateboarders. When Alecc’s doting father, Dan “Gravity” Newton died, it felt like his whole world was flipped upside down, but he knew he couldn’t give up, no matter how many bones he breaks, or how much blood he loses.
Kuko
by Brian Teruya
After abandoning a fox spirit to the evil Project Futurism, Kuko spends his time fending off Darkness and spreading light across Japan. Aided by a crew of fellow outcasts, Kuko wages and all-out war against Project Futurism.
Hot Doug
by Marcus Amezquita
Hot Doug is a living, walking, talking hotdog, whose whole purpose in life is to solve world hunger. Hot Doug teams up with a homeless guy, and they quickly realize that… feeding the world is too big a task for just the two of them, so they settle for feeding New York City.
Leafy & Chestnut
by Ellen Tan
Leafy, a ghost, and Chestnut, a purple cat, are like two peas in a pod. Together, they face many adventures as they wander musty swamps of rotting corpses, trying to find a place they can call home and where they will not be ostracised for their weird looks and strange personalities.
Poses, Expression Sheets & Story Boards
Drama
Interns: Chris Edwards, Christopher Richardson, Keven Padilla, Ramases Gomez-Diaz, Tyler Robey, Zaire Bey
Featured Character Designs
Branch
by Ramases Gomez-Diaz
Branch is a skittish spirit whose sole goal is to protect its forest. It’s been around for thousands of years and, therefore, has no mercy towards anyone that harms the forest. Branch’s sense of justice is brutal, but effective, until one day it finds itself questioning its morals when confronted by a small child.
Fizz
by Chris Edwards
Fizz is a skinny and kind person, who mostly wears red and only has one eye for unknown reasons, who finds out his super-cool skate park has been replaced by an evil grocery store.
Dale
by Tyler Robey
Misunderstood and persecuted, a cryptid named Dale must defend the Burgis Forest, near Stillrock, Oregon, from greedy humans looking to destroy his home and capture him.
Jack
by Keven Padilla
Jack was traumatized by his father leaving him early on. Since then, he's been behaving violently because he misses his father, and wishes he had a father figure in his life. Jack must learn to overcome his violent thoughts before they consume him.
Dove
by Christopher Richardson
Dove is a robot with a cape and a sword who must protect his garden and the gardens of others, from a villain who tries to steal the plants of law-abiding citizens.
Summer
by Zaire Bey
Summer is a teenage high school rebel who’s personality and hobbies don’t coincide with societal or gender norms. Under their delinquent persona, though, they are passionate, caring, and protective. After sacrificing themselves for two fellow students, Summer is forced to perform good deeds in order to be revived so they can continue their journey of self discovery and acceptance.
