Hello everyone! If you’re anything like me, you truly enjoy dreaming up characters, and environments and story lines for those characters. I have some particular tips that I use when designing characters that I thought I would share.
Characters are seen in tv shows, movies, video games, books, comic strips, and even sometimes on social media sites. Here are 12 tips to help as you design your own characters.
1. Don’t Copy
First of all, if something such as someone else’s artwork gives you the idea for a character, don’t try to copy their character. That’s plagiarism in art form, and plagiarism is wrong.
2. Reference
However, you can get a reference point, whether it is someone else’s character, or a picture of something, step back from it, and try to do something unique, even if it’s originally inspired by someone else’s character. If you look at something and don’t remember it perfectly in your head, that’ll result in you making something different. Not remembering something perfectly can be good sometimes. If you like what you made by not perfectly remembering a character, grab an image of the character you tried to do from memory, and make it different enough so you are not copying the other character, while keeping aspects of the ‘by bad memory’ version that you like.
3. Don’t Loose the Original Idea
When designing a character, don’t loose sight of your original idea. Such as if you were thinking about something else while drawing a character, what you are thinking about can affect how you draw. Be careful to not lose sight of your original idea. If you are inspired by a specific thing when you design your character, try to think about what inspired you while drawing the character on paper or in a digital art program.
4. Distinct Shape
A bunch of characters with similar body shapes is boring. Try to do silhouettes of your characters, and see if you can still tell who is who. If you can’t tell who is who, try to edit your characters designs and give them distinct shapes. For example, one could be short and chubby, another tall and thin. Try to give them all distinct shapes, so even when just silhouettes are given, you or other people can still tell who is who.
Sometimes if you are having trouble giving your characters distinct shapes, you could exaggerate key things, such as if your character is tall, don’t have them be a few inches taller than characters that they are related to, have them be a foot or more taller. Or if they are short, have them be a foot or so shorter. It’s okay to exaggerate in designing characters.
5. Audience
If you are designing a character that will be in some sort of media and seen a lot, try to figure out the audience that will be seeing them. Will they be seen by kids? Teens? Adults? Figure that out, and try to bend the design accordingly. For example a character that would be seen by kids would usually be based off of basic shapes like circles, squares, or triangles, and would have bright colors. Take Spongebob for example, his basic shape is a square, and he’s bright yellow.
6. Universe
Try to think about the universe your character will be in. What kind of beings will exist in the universe? What species are seen the most? Ghosts and zombies? Aliens and robots? Dragons and unicorns? Werewolves and vampires? Figure that out, and then figure out what your character is within that universe. If it’s part of a universe with werewolves and vampires, are they a werewolf or vampire, or an enemy of them? Are they a hero or villain? Or neither? They could be neutral. There can be enemies of species within universes.
7. Stand Out
Try to make your characters stand out, since there may be similar characters. Say you have a bear character. There will be a bunch of bear characters that exist. Try to make yours truly unique. Whether it be in terms of color, shape, outfit, or something else, try to make your characters stand out from the crowd.
8. Are You Stumped?
Sometimes if you are stumped for character ideas, listen to music or look up themes or aesthetics that can give you ideas. Music always gets my creative juices flowing, even if it takes a while sometimes. For me it’s usually quick though especially if I find the right song.
9. Break It Down
You should be able to break a character down into a simpler version, and still recognize who the specific character is. If you draw characters that are too complex, you may have issues with this. Try to find a happy medium in terms of a character being simple and complex. However it’s okay if they accidentally lean towards one or the other.
10. Can You Draw Them Again?
No matter how simple or complex, you should be able to draw a character more than once. You should stray away from design aspects such as tattoos or complex patterns that would be difficult to draw again in many angles. However that does not mean you can’t give them tattoos or patterns.
11. Expression
Try to make sure your character has visible ways of expressing their emotions. Such as if the character is a fennec fox or rabbit, their ears could be in different positions based off of how they are feeling. Or a cat character’s tail could be positioned differently based off of how they feel. Even if they are trying to mask their emotions by keeping a straight face.
12. Colors
You can use colors to convey personality or other aspects of your character. For example, pink is often associated with love, so if your character has something to do with something related to love, try to put pink somewhere in their color scheme. Another example is purple which can represent royalty, so if your character is royal try to have purple somewhere in their color scheme. There are a lot more examples of colors being associated with different things, so do some research if you’re curious about it.
There you have it, the basic tips that I use when designing characters. Have fun designing, and I will ‘see’ you soon in our virtual art world.