Character design - the attractiveness scale

I prefer drawing and reading comics with attractive (main) characters, but I have a strong preference for interesting faces over bland ones that meet every standard of conventional beauty, and for there to be plenty of variation between different characters.

It's fun to try and make characters look less attractive, though. I like drawing minor characters because I feel more free to come up with weird faces that I wouldn't necessarily want to use for someone I'm drawing all the time.

I'd have to agree with you. I like attractive characters, but they have to be distinct from eachother. Not the cookie cutter anime body & face type.

Basically remove the outfit and hair to make sure they still look different from their cast.

I prioritize cuteness over attractiveness. Actually, I really struggle with designing conventionally attractive characters because I guess I just lack experience being attracted to people in that way. So most of my characters are either very cute or just kinda cute. I like to joke that the most attractive character who appears in my comic is Isaac, who hasn't shown up yet, but once a picture of him got a lot of likes on Wysp so I have this joke that people find him attractive.

Despite that I do believe that attractive characters are a huge draw for people. I repeatedly see comics on Tapastic get very popular when their characters are conventionally attractive, even if the story/writing isn't as strong (note: not talking about anyone here's comic). Also, stories that place a lot of emphasis on relationships between attractive characters are even more popular and draw in even more people. Since nearly my entire cast is asexual and aromantic, and the one main character who isn't is already in a relationship, there isn't anything to ship or any pairing to root for in my comic, which could be a drawback to readers who really enjoy romance and shipping.

But I don't plan on introducing any attractive characters anytime soon. I like my characters cute and cartoony, and I am happy there are no shipping wars going on in my comic, because then we can focus on the cool mysteries and magic fights!

I feel like anything could be attractive if it's drawn that way.

Unfortunately my art skills only go so far and it's really hard to draw in subtle differences. The biggest distinction are the eyes. I've never been accused of sameface but I always draw men with below shoulder hair because it just looks more normal to me and there's more you can do with it.

Since I'm writing a romance, I just make everyone as attractive as possible.

I don't agree with the idea that they have to be ugly to be distinguishable. I design mine to still be pretty/ beautiful (depending) but take specific traits from the real world (such as specific nose shapes, lip shapes, jaw shapes, eye shapes etc) and apply them to the characters according to how I envision them.

I have nothing against characters that are attractive or good looking, but it goes differently when every single character in the same story is attractive, or then old person being like young people with a little wrinkle on their faces. There are diferences and i really get frustrated when i can't have the least idea about a character's age. But, as a lot of people here said before me, what i found most important is to be able to distinguish one character from another. I get kinda upset when i have to read everything again because i just could't tell who was the person talking D:
Well, in my webcomic i have made one of my objectives to try to show different kind of characters.

A character should not be necessarily pretty, but their design should be appealing. This would mean that the combination of shapes, colours and accessories is well matched and is not annoying to the reader. Keep in mind that you'd like a design which would be easy to replicate multiple times and would be fairly expressive.
Most importantly, make the design tell something about the character, it's just one of the ways to share information - Are they really kind? Then big round eyes would usually convey this. Are they very hardworking/busy? Make them a little dirty. There are many theories on character design related to their nature online, most are aimed at animation production but the same could be applied for comics.
You like a character design even when they are not pretty, because it tells you something about them.

I tried very hard to make my characters look different physically and now every time i add an episodic character i strive to give them unique features. I do like pretty characters, but there are so many types of pretty that i'm not certain characters can be ugly.

There are characters i specifically made to be pretty, but pretty after my standards, what i find attractive, thus not universally valid. Mine usually still retain that poodle face because of my style XD
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Apparently characters resemble the creator in a way or another

But i love seeing other people's characters with all their flaws, imperfections, with their beauty or ugliness. They're all really good. A good personality also makes one appear more beautiful imo, well if the character is well written.

If I gave my long answer, I'd just be echoing a few other folks' opinions here (@AnnaLandin, @shazzbaa) ... but I'll add something else to my feelings on it. Warning: if you've no interest in crazy socio-political ramblings, skip past what's below.

[rant]

Of course I like looking at beautiful characters. I'm a human being that isn't blind. I don't mind if most of the characters in a given comic are attractive (so long as they are DISTINCT in both appearance, voice, motivation, etc), but what concerns me about comic books (and film and television, similarly) is the over-emphasis on the superficial. Visual storytelling has a unique opportunity to connect to folks with its stories in a different way than written word, music and other mediums do. Visual storytelling is very, very important -- and it has been for many thousands of years.

However, I believe firmly that, as storytellers, we've taken on the responsibility for our stories. And that responsibility is that our stories help inform their readers of values, ideas and beliefs. Superficial stories that only exist to promote characters that all look the same and are all pretty and are all reveling in their prettiness, or that over-emphasize how "cool" it is to live a wealthy, self-indulgent lifestyle ... to me, they're no better than watching a bad/phony/soulless reality TV show like The Bachelor. It's that type of focus that trains people to only value appearances, teaches women that they are only worth how much a man wants them more than other women, teaches people that they should seek romance for awful reasons like wealth and fame, teaches people that social responsibility is less important than what type of clothes that they wear. Stories where everyone looks the same? What message do you think that is teaching, if not that the reader should desire to conform and look/think/act like everyone else? Stories have powerful impacts on people, and we have to consider what our stories are saying, what impact they might have ... the focus on superficial storytelling right now is, honestly, an incredible problem in our society.

Our world faces challenges that we've never faced before. Climate change, ever-increasing weapons of mass destruction, over-population, struggles to break into meaningful space exploration and colonization, political/corporate globalization, an incomprehensible evolution in technological growth without understanding the ultimate implications of that technology, etc. Widespread war and genocide are happening ... well, right now. No, that stuff isn't fun to think about: it's challenging. But I firmly believe that a shift towards the superficial in storytelling by the masses bodes poorly for us as a world civilization.

I love looking at pretty people, too. But there are more important things to consider, and storytelling in any medium has a certain responsibility to get people to think about the bigger, more important things. If comics can do that AND have pretty (but distinct!) characters ... well, cool. Awesome.

And sure, not every story needs to have some sort of super-serious meaning. Satire and comedy are important. Stories about every day problems and how to deal with those problems, important. Stories about the nature of friendship, family, relationships to other people ... all important. I'm specifically railing on stories that only care about celebrating superficial qualities. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those!

[/rant]

I have to say that in my opinion there are two actual discussions that are being had here, one is "pretty vs. 'ugly'/realistic" and the other is "generic same-face vs. variety of facial features".

The reason that I'm dividing them in this way is because they can be mixed and matched like so:

One type of artist (Generic pretty) has learned how to draw ONE pretty male and ONE pretty female, and all characters are the same pretty male and pretty female with different clothes and hair (sometimes this kind of artist might even only have one face, whether male or female!). This can be a stylistic choice (self-imposed limitation) or a skill limitation (they've learned how to draw that face really well but have difficulty with other types). If it's a stylistic choice then it's its own school of thought, people who feel that character comes from dialogue and clothing and that faces are not that important as long as they're attractive and serviceable.

Another type of artist (Varied pretty) chooses to only draw characters they find personally attractive, but that attractiveness encompasses a wider range (range varies by skill of artist). This is definitely a stylistic choice and its own school of thought, whether guided by a search for escapism or simply enjoying to draw attractive people they're drawn to.

A third type of artist (Generic realistic) usually intends to portray everyone differently, but due to skill limitations everyone ends up sharing some if not all facial features, like the same eyes, same nose etc. I currently fall into this category personally as I desperately want to become the fourth type of artist (see below) but am still working hard on my art to get there.

And finally, the varied realistic school of thought are folks who want to portray the world as it looks to them, with "ugly" features presented in an attractive manner and even traditionally attractive features provided depth by character, and they have the skill to portray it in such a manner.

I'm going to be honest, I do very much like symmetry when it comes to character faces. I guess that may be another way of saying I like pretty, attractive faces! I think the characters I create and their attractiveness depends on the reader. Female characters tend to have very circular/ovular faces where as my male faces are more like a hexagon in shape. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder! I often find many characters attractive that are not considered such in the mainstream.

I'm on the fence about pretty characters. For me, I simply prefer making characters unique or different from each one. Giving them their own flow and design so they don't risk looking too samey. Some characters can look like horrible monsters, some more humanoid. At the end of the day, I feel like their own look is what makes people like them, not how pretty they are. But that's just how I feel.

@shazzbaa and @keii4ii I love this expansion upon my comment! I definitely agree with your more advanced definition of "realism", part of the point of my post was artistic ability/range versus artistic stylistic choice, sometimes artists fool themselves into thinking as well that because this is all they want to draw well and they won't stretch their range that this is all that is necessary for storytelling.

Another aspect that I wanted to bring up on this topic as well, (hopefully not too off-topic) and it's one that even us artistic types tiptoe around, is the idea of ethnic and cultural diversity in the faces that we are drawing. Of course if you are drawing a story in medieval Japan or some other such culturally isolated environment, absolutely everyone can share the same skin tone and a large variety of their facial features. However, if you are drawing a comic about the modern world, or even in a fantasy land of your own creation, I feel that as artists it's our duty to at least TRY to show different ethnicities residing in this world, regardless of whether one has a cartoony style or more "realistic".

I feel that readers should be able to find themselves somewhere in the pages of my comic, and that's part of regarding whether I am attractive or not, or if someone could find me or someone like me attractive, is making sure that I can look in media and see folks who might represent me in there, so as artists we should populate our world with a large variety of features, including skin tone and multi-ethnic features.

I personally don't believe in attractiveness if the character or its story doesn't call for beauty or attractiveness. Sure, they need to be visually appealing to some extent, but they don't HAVE to be drop-dead gorgeous. I believe it adds to the relatability to have a normal looking character or maybe even an ugly character because there are people who, let's face it, look like they just finished a two-hour session of dumpster diving.

Also, I don't know about y'all, but I distinct my characters based on height, size, and head shape. Occasionally I'll use the same body structure (especially for male forms) but that's as far as I'll go when it comes to similarities.