Do you ever worry about your characters appearing too similar to each other?

[Leyelle]

makes sense. since all my characters are humans so far, I usually go with heights, complexions, hair colors and textures and cuts, weights and body types, eye shapes, nose shapes, lips shapes, all those combinations that help switch things up

[skidiggy]

I feel that. Variety's the spice of life, right?

[BoomerZ]

This is why manga characters all have strange hair colors and superheros/villians have costumes. Everyone has this problem. It becomes harder if your characters don't have a uniform or set type of clothes they always wear. This goes for names to. Try not to have them named with the same first letter. (looking at you Frieren and Fern).

[simonitropunk]

It can be especially in my case, I've been drawing Lyza for quite sometime and I don't want my female characters looking the same especially in the leading roles. Maybe, try different hairstyles, shape their heads differently or add an accessory or the colors and so on...

[Leyelle]

Maybe, try different hairstyles, shape their heads differently or add an accessory or the colors and so on...

Yeah, this is what I do. Fortunately with novels as long as I can describe them it works. It's just something I occasionally have to make note of when making new OCs

[AmysGames]

For me it's always been like, you get really comfortable with a certain way of drawing something (e.g. facial features) to the point that trying to do anything different feels weird and wrong. You have to really push yourself out of your comfort zone to try something different and see what works, like how I'm slowly adding more nose shapes to my repertoire, haha.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I try to be considerate when thinking and talking about this, because it can come off very condescending to say "i have no problem with this, i dont understand how other people can't. " So I can understand your perspective. I still don't feel like this an area I struggle with, but it's not like there isn't more learning to be done.

Especially with things like noses and eye shapes tend to fall into a small number of categories for me. Though I've yet to be called out for "same face syndrome," at least not in recent memory.

[vapidink]

I don't think I do, but it also feels like that's up for the readers to decide. Sure, I make an effort to make characters interesting in their own way both in design and narrative, but I don't really make a conscious effort to make them stand out. So far, I haven't gotten any comments or feedback about them being too similar, so I hope I'm doing alright.

[Leyelle]

Lol, yeah. Nobody's commented on anything like that for my characters yet, but fortunately it's a novel, so it's mostly left to their imagination

[kyupol]

There's a little similarity between Mara-Nina and Claudita... the hair is changed a little to make them different. Also height difference. Claudita is 5'5.. Mara-Nina is 5'7...

[vapidink]

Most of my stuff is novels, except for the one short comic I'm doing right now, but I do have some character art.

[NickRowler]

In the end there are a limited amount of features in the world and people are all pretty alike in one way or another,

I don't 100% agree with this statement. There is a huge range of possibilities of what people look like. Sometimes it's just pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

I was worried that Ash might look too similar to Zeta. Here is an old concept art of Ash.

However, in the final comic, I gave him darker skin and more textured hair. He still does look similar to Zeta but they don't look like twins or anything.

[Leyelle]

I don't 100% agree with this statement. There is a huge range of possibilities of what people look like. Sometimes it's just pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

there ARE a huge amount, and people do tend to look very different from each other. But it is limited lol. And most people share traits with other people if you stop to study them. Making characters stand out is all about the different combinations you choose to use.

[Leyelle]

I remember you mentioning that. I only have art of my FL right now tho, and one drawing of the male lead as a crow done by @2DLenzy

[DasIstWunderblyat]

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[XiuLyn_12]

I suppose I do. I have twin characters, I make sure readers can tell them apart by drawing them in different hairstyles and eye shapes. I think I did pretty well differentiating them.
However, my concern is that I'm afraid I can't show much about body sizes. Heights are another thing that is not a problem to me (to most artists too). I'm a thin person, so I can only understand how a thin body works. It took me a lot of practice drawing bodies with muscles, and I'm hoping I can draw bigger-sized characters in the future!

[Leyelle]

Ahh, I'm chunky so drawing bigger characters is something I do quite often. really tall and thin is a struggle for me to style tho when it comes to my characters

[XiuLyn_12]

Yeah, we definitely would understand our own body type more!

[TheGentleArtist]

Nah, I do not really have a problem with that.

[Vassia]

I realized when I first started writing that my characters dialogue sounded too similar, so now I'm very conscious of making my characters have a different voice and a different way of speaking. I still think I may fall back into my old habits sometimes though with some characters, especially if the have similar personalities.