How to design a character: the ultimate guide to character design
Table Of Content
Get a video in your inbox every Sunday tailored to your unique goals, the all-access pass to our community, powerful resources, exclusive content, and the Character Design Survival Guide. Her hair is going to be messy from encountering grime and never being washed, it’s going to be greasy from never being washed. If we’re taking into account her Asian background, t’s going to be a slightly thicker strand and not as wispy. The most practical thing, although maybe not the most austere from her perspective, would be for it to be chopped messily and uneven, like she took a dull blade to it herself and sawed if off.
Methods for Adding Colour to Your Design
If your character is wise, perhaps give them exaggeratedly large glasses or a profound, thoughtful expression. The character’s past experiences can greatly influence their reaction to conflict. Traumatic events, past failures, or successes can all influence how they approach and resolve conflicts. You might find that the backstory is more exciting than the character itself. Don't get too lost in the weeds—as long as these questions help build your character and you’re having fun, there’s no harm done. We’re not saying you must illustrate an entire world for your character.
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All your work will be in vain if it clashes or blends too well with the background. Getting familiar with some color theory and picking your colors carefully is a good habit to cultivate and can be an important part of making your characters pop. If you’re designing more than one character for a project, you want them to be both different from each other so that you can tell them apart, and consistent enough that they make sense together. This is primarily achieved by maintaining the same style for the whole cast, but that’s easier said than done. If you feel like you’ve done everything you can to sharpen the silhouette but it’s still missing something to set it apart from the rest, a simple trick you can use is to add a characteristic element. This might be anything from a hairstyle (like Sonic), to clothing, (like Donald Duck’s sailor shirt and cap), to a weapon (like Captain Hook’s hook and cutlass sword).
Experiment with your designs
Depending on its personality, a figure's emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Let us know if you're a freelance designer (or not) so we can share the most relevant content for you. Generally, building a detailed background with scenery and props is not only a lot of extra work, it can distract focus from the character. Well, technically Galactus lives in outer space, but for everybody else, it is important to create a sense of environment for an effective presentation.
Flip the canvas while you draw
Maddy likes using Procreate for this stage as it allows her much freedom in raster sketching, as if on a digital piece of paper. This is where she also identifies the light source and how it affects shadows and highlights. Depending on the latter, you must choose between muted or wildly exaggerated expressions. Classic examples of exaggerated expressions can be found in the legendary cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants (1999). Make sure important parts of the character, like the arms or legs, are not overlapping in a way that obscures their form in the silhouette.
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Well, for multiple reasons, it’s actually much easier to think of both the overall shape and the individual segments of hair as shapes instead of individual lines. In addition to creating characters from scratch step by step, you can also use AI tools to generate stunning characters with one click. Proportions play a significant role in how a character is perceived.
Step 4: Facial Features and Expressions
Out of all the redesigns we’ve seen so far, I like Hypnos’ the most. In Hades, he had a very implike expression that made him seem a bit quirky. Now we get to seem him cuddled up with gorgeous long locks, and he looks like a straight-up angel. Demeter is the grandmother of Melinoë and an icon in Greek mythology. This time around, she’s leaning into the warrior look rather than her aged sage visage in the original. This pattern of submitting drafts and receiving critiques mimics the structure of most industry projects too.
Avoid tangents to create a sense of depth
But while Blair’s guide is a fantastic point of reference, there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules on how to design your characters. Don’t fear this will turn your character into a cartoon caricature. Depending on your project requirements, you can create exaggerations with varying degrees of intensity. A coherent personality reflected throughout your design will make people connect and relate to your character. You can rely on some classic conflicts to create a dramatic thrust behind your complex character's actions. They’re the driving force behind your character’s traits and personality.
Be selective with your color palette
Incorporate elements from various cultures and historical periods to add depth and authenticity to your character's design. Experiment with different poses to bring out your character's personality. A confident character might have bold and dynamic poses, while a shy character might have more reserved ones.
Otherwise, most cartoonish styles tend to keep the hard edges for their colors and shading. To get an idea of how all this is done, search for and study process videos from other character artists on YouTube. In a lot of ways, you have already successfully designed a character by this point. Design is less about illustrative flair and more about choices, creating the concept, and the bulk of that hard work is behind you.
A well-designed character should be able to convey their feelings effectively through their expressions, enhancing their relatability and depth. Here are some key elements that contribute to the success of a character design. She presented these images to Keane and the team for feedback, then took the team's notes and continued to develop Fei Fei until she had several pages of designs. On some projects, this back and forth can go on for months, but not this one.
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