Apr 2016
56 / 57
May 2016
Nov 2019
donathinfrye
Apr '16
dglisson

@dglisson This, 100% in regards to cultural/ethnic diversity. It's important. Without going into a speech about it, it's a big part of what I was trying to say above when I said that we, as storytellers, sort of have to be the ones to make acceptance (or at least awareness) of diversity the norm -- whether that's different ethnicities, cultures, attractiveness levels, orientation, or any other sort of diversity. We live in a diverse world. I'm not saying that these things should be shoe-horned into your story, but every story has the opportunity to represent honest diversity in one way or another.

And there's nothing wrong with having attractive characters. One of my comics, Atonement, has many attractive characters -- it's part of the commentary of the story. It takes place in a distant future where excess and physical health and attractiveness exist in abundance for many people in society ... and yet, society is still fundamentally depressed. Not every story needs to be commentary on attractiveness, of course, but if everyone in a story is very attractive ... well, I want there to be a compelling reason why that is that is meaningful to the story.

But I'm starting to ramble again. Diversity is really the key word here. People are diverse, and I feel strongly that that's important for us to portray.

keii4ii
Apr '16

Ehhhhhhhh, representation should be its own topic. I can see the relevance, but there's just so much to discuss about it that it completely eclipses what THIS thread is meant to be about.

But just to address the parts of representation that's immediately relevant:

I go for diverse face/body types, but not because I'm trying to make people feel good about themselves. That's not a goal I am pursuing with my current story. For me, it's all about the characters as well as their position in the world they live in, plus their relation to the overall storytelling effect.

Now, I could shoot for multiple goals at once. I could aim to have the characters in a way such that representation is maximized without hurting the storytelling impact. But I choose not to, for reasons that will go into off topic territory if I explain them here. I have enough variety to make my characters immediately distinct from each other, and that's good enough for me, for this particular story.

I also want to opine that diversity and representation are not identical. They have large overlaps, but still differ. It's possible to shoot for diversity without shooting for representation (and arguably vice versa as well).

Luminosophy
Apr '16
3

My biggest gripe with the "diversity" argument is that diversity can mean literally anything depending where you live. I come from Australia so, while all my characters may be considered diverse to me - to others they may not consider it "diverse" because I do not draw from their culture or races. For example I have an expansive world that's built on the visual and cultural inspirations of the Asia Pacific / Oceania region in general. But I refuse to draw outside of that because:

  1. "Write what you know"
  2. Our media is so heavily saturated with American music, movies, comics, clothes, brands, television. Just freaking everything. I got tired of it and wanted to show the world what Australia looked like. (And not the Hollywood-ised version of it either.)

I'm really tired of this argument because it sprang up out of nowhere on the political correctness wave but thanks to extreme ethno-centrism, none of the people who preach diversity couldn't understand that everything already is diverse. What about Polish or Ukranian authors writing Polish or Ukranian characters? Is that not diverse when it's read by a Japanese person let's say. The internet is international, it's not one nation. People are already writing from personal experience across vast distances of land and cultural philosophies. Literally the only issue hear is "But it doesn't look exactly like me, so I can't relate". Hey man, that's your problem. Most other normal functioning humans don't need a mirror in order to relate to other humans.

dglisson
Apr '16
keii4ii

I do agree that representation should be its own topic, so I apologize and did not mean to hijack the thread in any way.

But to do my best to steer the discussion back to your original topic, what do you think are the storytelling consequences when an artist shows only "traditionally attractive" features/faces in their comics, and either ignores facial features that don't fit that template or relegates them to only the "bad guys"? Just curious on your opinion.

donathinfrye
Apr '16
1

I'm not a politically correct person, or the type of person that needs everyone to look like me for me to be able to relate to them. I'd be in trouble if I did. :stuck_out_tongue:

I understand your frustration with the argument being taken too far. But just because you are self-aware about what honest culture looks like doesn't mean that many people in the business of creating comics (or tv/movies/books/etc) are. Representation can be handled bluntly or it can be handled honestly. I'll point to the TV show The Flash, because it does something that I think is rather nice; it has a homosexual police chief character without ever having its other characters react awkwardly to the fact that the police chief is gay. It's just simply who he is; he's a guy, who is married to another guy and has anniversaries and normal problems. His being different isn't used as a source of comedy. It's neither beaten into the audience's heads, nor is it swept under the rug. It's just as normal of a part of the story as the fact that a black cop took in and raised his neighbors' white orphan son when his family died. The Flash isn't blunt about representation or diversity. It's just honest to its story and its world. All stories have totally different needs in that way, but I think that these are good things to think about.

Sorry for sidestepping onto the parallel tracks here. :stuck_out_tongue: You're right, of course. Representation becomes much broader topic. I'll hop back. I think it's a really good idea to remember that someone's attractiveness doesn't only have to do with their physical appearance, but also their psychology and culture and wealth! The same character could be portrayed as more/less attractive depending on what their natural disposition is (suave? Cool? Happy? Angry/isolated?) ... or wealth (rich characters tend to have nicer clothes, makeup, hair, the things that typical suggest conventional attractiveness to many) ... or goals (characters who try to be conventionally attractive generally are seen that way more often than character who are obsessed with other goals and don't pay much attention to their appearance, etc).

Just as I like stories with characters that don't all look the same, I also like stories where the characters all live in different headspaces, and a character's psychology/sociology can have as big of an impact on how they look as their natural physical features. Think about your typical Cinderella story, or your classic teenage comedy where the nerdy girl gets a makeover and suddenly everyone sees her differently. Those less direct influences on appearance are good things to consider when designing a character, too!

When I bump into this, it can be a turn off depending on how it's handled or whether or not it's weaved into being a part of the story. I don't think it's good to, even unconsciously, perpetuate the message that people who all look the same and value traditional attractiveness are good, and people who don't look conventionally attractive (or merely look different) are bad. That's a really well put, compact way to say what I think I've been trying to say, so thanks for that! :x

keii4ii
Apr '16

It makes sense for stories aimed at a very young audience. But for everything else, if the design spells out the character's moral alignment/ importance... that makes things predictable. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage; other times, it hurts the story.

This applies even if the characters aren't pretty, though. If every character who has a kindly look turns out to be good and kind, then that has the same effect.

Indeed!

sauropasquini
Apr '16

I think that characters should be designed following other issues than beauty or actractiveness.
The look of a character should be related to his role in the story.
Usually, if in the story there are more than a character, they shall be easily addressed, so each face shall be different.
Bad guys should use "sharp shapes" and a set of colors, for example, especially if the comic is not realistic.
Good guys should use "soft shapes" and usually to be good-looking can help, but it's not a rule. See Shrek. He's ugly but good.

DeadAccount
Apr '16

I'm not gonna lie, it seems like i've been subconsciously making our protagonist easier on the eye over the course of the comic (though it might just be than I'm getting slightly less terrible at drawing?..) Having said that, I definitely support characters looking unique and not just having the same generic face. Look at these "average faces" of women from all over the world:
5

You can tell they're all attractive, but also..really samey looking for the most part.

I think it's entirely possible to push features around and still have characters be attractive, as well as it's all well designed. I spent my young teenage years lusting after Gorillaz, ffs. These guys are no lookers, but they are fun characters, as I'm sure most would agree >_> So yeah, it's kind of a complicated topic for sure.

quakeulf
Apr '16

Whatever works.

If you can make it work it's all good, which is why I can tolerate the unfathomable ugliness of Kaiji and Akagi yet at the same time enjoy the more refined characters in Evlambdangelion and many Yuropeen comics like the French-Belgian ones.

VermillionWorks
Apr '16

While I'm still a sucker for certain very obviously "pretty" characters at times (though less and less actually, I see designs I may have liked back in the day that I'm pretty indifferent towards now), I've grown much more of a fondness for those with more character to their faces and things to their looks that make it obvious that they're not just walking GORGEOUSNESS. XP

I also believe if you're writing's good enough and perhaps your art style intriguing and expressive enough, you can make any character "attractive" to readers in certain ways, people sometimes really underestimate the power of a good personality.

My only problem is I really need to adapt my art style to my way of thinking, I still have a problem with same-face syndrome sometimes. XD

kristintipping7
Apr '16
2

I started out in the "pretty" camp when I was in middle school and high school and have been drifting slowly toward the "ugly" camp as I get older. Prettifying characters only really bothers me when it's in opposition to the story being told. That happens frustratingly often, though. If the other characters in a story are treating a person like they're ugly or even just average looking, but the audience sees that person as strikingly beautiful, it can fuck with the our suspension of disbelief. The writing is telling us one thing and the art is telling us another. If the story relies on a character being shlubby, or sickly, or just average looking, the art should sell that aspect of them. If the story says a character is incredibly gorgeous, the art should sell that too.

A good example of this principal in action is the contrast between Prince Zuko from Last Air Bender and Therru from Tales from Earthsea. Or if you want to get real mean, I could use the difference between TV Zuko and the live action movie version of Zuko. In all three cases the character in question is disfigured, or at least the writing tells us they're disfigured. However, TV Zuko is the only case where the character design actually sells the fact that he's disfigured. It's fine that he's portrayed as conventionally attractive aside from that, because the rest of his physical appearance isn't as important to the story. In order to be sold on the physical and emotional trauma of his backstory, though, the audience has to see that trauma demonstrated his body, even if it's not pleasant for us to look at. Because the audience "buys" that he is horribly scared we also "buy" how drastically it affects his life in both the past and present.


(TV Zuko)

Now compare this with Therru or movie Zuko. In both cases the audience is told that the character in question is horribly disfigured, but we are not really shown it. They are more immediately pleasant to look at, but also much less believable. It's only one of many reasons why TV Zuko is the most popular character on a widely beloved show and the other two are unpopular characters from movies that bombed. However, I think it's symptomatic of a misunderstanding of how story telling works that led to both movies being terrible.


(Therru)

(Movie Zuko)

iddqd
May '16

Interesting discussion, but is it just me, or does a big part of the "ugliness" argument boil down to "unconventional features can be made to look attractive"? If so, it's hard to argue with that, but what about making honest-to-god ugly characters, human kind of characters that a reasonable person would describe as ugly without a second thought? Anyone ever tried to roll with that idea?

TheVoidchildProject
May '16

Not to de-rail but I 100 % agree with your sentiment here. This is development in it's more organic form counter to cramming it down your throat. Where representation fails in, especially, mainstream stories is when it doesn't realise that you don't have to make a big deal of representation. That's not to say it doesn't require insight and thought on the authors part, but I'd like to think that the creators of this show have gone one step beyond the epiphany stage.

In a related suggestion to this topic, people should play the PC game Cradle for a very interesting sci-fi take on looks and appearance. I won't say anything more than that cause I think it'd ruin the game not to discover the rest on your own. Or at least read up on the story. Well worth it,

KSlinger
May '16

I'm a fan of good character design so, first and foremost, the overall look of my characters is more important to me than whether or not they are beautiful/handsome. Obviously for certain characters being good looking helps things along, but I've never set out to design a character that EVERYONE will find gorgeous just for the sake of it.

Then again, I think my personal preferences creep into my art more than I realise. I definitely have a 'type' and Jed fits that category 100% (you should see my Tinder account, it's hilarious). At the same time, Serge also has many attributes I find attractive, and even Morris is appealing to me in many ways.

Whether a character is odd looking, good looking, overweight, underweight, healthy or sick just depends on their lifestyle and history, and there's a nice variety of all in West as Jed travels around the world.

Myself, I find even 'ugly' characters handsome sometimes. I just draw what feels right.

TristanJensen
May '16

I don't really create characters that go to the extreme in either direction. I just kind of want my characters to look unique and visually interesting, whether that means making them attractive average or ugly depends on the character I'm trying to make.
That being said for just random doodles I tend to go for attractive characters mainly because they tend to be easier to draw...

keii4ii
May '16
KSlinger

That's kind of what I do. The point is, there's enough variety of pretty that you don't have to make it a priority to have it. I prioritize how their look works with the rest of their character (their background, role in the story, lifestyle, etc etc), how they DIFFER from each other as well as what 'feels' right. In most cases, I don't even need to make a conscious effort to make them pretty; it's just what I naturally gravitate to?

3 years later
WindrushLobsterlover
Nov '19

I might not be the right person to say this, seeing as I only draw cartoon animals which usually look cute no matter what I do. Characters should at least have some appeal to them, even if they aren't very attractive. This applies to villains too; the appeal is the reason people will be invested to read about them. You can make characters pretty, but it's really cool when are uniquely attractive. It's not just limited to have big boobs or a big butt; some characters can have pretty eyes or a pretty personality. I think every character has some form of beauty, it just shows up in different places.

For some reason, I personally really like mysterious people, especially if they're still nice underneath. I know that debonair, roughishly charming characters are SUPPOSED to be attractive, but they still work on me.