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Apr 2024

Just questioning, how do you guys draw a person that is most likely to be shown once?
Do you toss whatever comes to your mind (their age, sex, hair, body forms, clothes, etc.) and/or get some quick references?
And do you sometimes feel like picking one of them as a recurring character?

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    Apr '24
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    May '24
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I doodle them on the spot and it´s one of my favourite things to do,
I´m teaching kids how to draw and creating random character with
simple sketches is part of my course

As far as randos, I'll kinda just experiment and see what kinds of features I can actually draw on a certain day.

(You can kinda tell here which characters are gonna reappear according to detail/differences, despite the awkward style phase.)


But in case I like drawing that character, or they appear more than a few times (due to environments or MC situations) then they become more recurring as I go along the plot.

Then I'll come up with brief info on their role, when they appear, and what they contribute to the plot/mains. Nothing too detailed, yet.

Example, Dr Fowler was just an imitation of a plague doctor, and was meant to appear once in the entire series, but as I developed future plot points, I felt his inclusion would serve a greater purpose, so he's gonna reappear and become more active at a certain point.

Not to mention, my style has improved a lot, so he deserves to be redrawn!

I think about the most common styles worn by the people of that world and have people wear variations on it.

ex- If it was set in "our" world most people would be in jeans and tees.

Faces and bods? Whatever feels and fits into the art space right at the time.

Sometimes I will draw lesser OCs as background characters. I already designed the character but I have little to no plans to using them anytime soon.

Other times, I will just free draw that characters with whatever pops into my head.

One time when I drew a crowd scene I put a request out for cameos:

Otherwise I’ll just draw random shapes and features. The guards here are all one-offs:

Sometimes with these one-offs I’ll see a design that I like, and that character will become recurring. This happened with that blue haired dude (was gonna be throwaway, became a driver of a major plot point), and I also intend on reusing the guard with the orange hair

I just doodle them when I'm sketching. Usually end up with similar hairstyles between them but I doubt most are going to pay too much attention to them. (Especially if I blurred the background a bit)

Well, whenever I include cameos in crowd scenes. Largely they tend to be mythological characters and characters from obscure British kids’ TV shows. In Chapter VII, I included Larry the Lamb, Ernest the Policeman and Mr Growser from the Toytown stories of S.G. Hulme Beaman. In Chapter XIX, I included Paddington, Kaa (Kipling’s, NOT Disney’s), Huxley Pig, Bungo Womble, a Flump, a Clanger, et cetera, because I wanted to keep their legacies and their memories alive.

9 days later

An interesting subject. I actually thought about it until I saw the questions asked. Looking back on own work I noticed that:

1 - I don't really have a lot of random people in my story. Maybe that's something that making it lack texture?
2 - when I do they tend to be very impressionistic. Letting the reader know they're their but keeping the focus on the OC

Again this is all done without thought. so after this I may start thinking about it more carefully. I may come to the same conclusion but at least it will be an informed conclusion.