Good vs “Bad” character design

Hmmm, to actually get to your question...

I think there is a difference between oc's and characters in a story. For story characters you need to make sure that their designs actually match the tone and worldbuilding of the story and world they are in. For example, if the story is realistic medieval it would be very out of place to have the main character have blue hair and high tech gear or headphones. For oc's it's a bit harder to say what works and what doesn't.

I recommend to atleast pick the colours carefully. And try to experiment with them. Something I would consider common and cliche are characters that use a lot of black and white. That's playing it safe. Experiment with colour combinations! One of the things that attract me the most to a character is their colour scheme. A interesting colour scheme can make me fall in love with the design. A "bad" or boring colour scheme on the other hand can make me roll my eyes at a character design though.

I also very much recommend experimenting with different facial shapes and body types. Having a character with a not so strong jawline or different eyes than the usual cutesy anime eyes can make them stand out from the plethora of oc's.

Character design has a lot of different elements, but none of them are concrete rules. You just have to kind of.... feel it? Things I take into account are:

• Distinctive silhouette, especially as part of a lineup of characters from the same work.
• The overall shapes and colours of the character and their clothing and accessories should tell you something about the character at a glance. ie. rounded shapes feel gentle, sort, nurturing and bouncy, Pointy shapes feel threatening, dynamic and "angry", square ones feel grounded, reliable, heavy. Colours and overall "value" (light, dark and midtones) also come with meanings or an overall impression. Even if my plan is to deliberately subvert these assumptions later, it's still vital that the reader's first glance at the character has them making assumptions based on how they look.
• Clothing tells you something about that character's place in the world they live in. Often this may involve evoking cultural ideas from our own world, so if a character wears something that looks a bit like a leather biker jacket, for example, even if it's a Fantasy world with no concept of a biker, to the audience the cultural significance makes us recognise "this character is tough and a rebel".
• Appropriate detail level for purpose. You don't want a character so complex that they're hard to read, and you definitely don't one one who is a pain to draw repeatedly.
• Looks good in the context you designed it for. If your character runs a lot, you want a design that looks good when they're running. If they need to loom threateningly, you want a design that looks good for that.

My overall approach is often to think of a "big theme" or "core idea" I want the character to evoke. It might be something like "Fire" or "A flower" or "A snake" or "A prisoner". I try to always make my choices about characters very deliberate, so you'll rarely see me fall back on stuff like "I dunno, I just put her in a low-cut top because it's sexy". If a character is dressed in a seductive way in my work, it's usually very deliberate so you feel like the character chose to wear that; not me.
So with Subo, a character we're following in Errant right now, I wanted the assumptions you make about him on looking to be things like: Relaxed, doesn't care about looking neat, maybe kinda lazy, a hippy, sturdy and planted, evokes the idea of a tree. He has soft, natural sort of fabrics in browns and greens, he wears sandals and baggy pants, he's a fairly big, square guy, he has shaggy hair and he's unshaven and he has gentle eyes. He probably at least subconsciously evokes Shaggy from Scooby-doo via cultural osmosis, so you'll immediately start making assumptions like "this guy is a coward", "this guy is lazy" without maybe even thinking.

Well, your characters are not a lot of people. They have different haircuts, they wear different clothes, they have different height and weight. I am not a professional concept maker, but you can see how these characters have different silhouettes =)

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Aside from all the rules, it really depends on the context the character is in.

For example, Gromit is one of my favorite character designs out there. He's so simple! But SO MUCH or his character shines through in the way he's animated! And his simple design really complements that. There's nothing distracting the watcher from his very subtle expressions and body language. Also, he has a recognizable silhouette which definitely helps.

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In my own comic though, A design this simple would probably not work (even if I love it a lot), Because I'm confided to a different medium, without moving image. Even though body language is important for comics too, I simply cannot recreate in a comic the same amount of subtle changes in expression and posture.

If I'm playing a video game though, I have different expectations on the character designs. I had a game art teacher that talked about something he called 'cosplay factor', which he saw was similar to 'appeal' in animation. The cosplay factor was about how cool the character was percieved, how likely you were to see someone cosplay them, as well as how memorable the character design was. I wouldn't say that Gromit has a strong Cosplay Factor, but that a lot of anime and game characters do. The context makes the viewers accept things like, a single very spiky pauldron, or crazy hair, because it's part of the genres. Once again gonna use a fav of mine as an example. I think Zenyatta has a strong 'cosplay factor'. He's recognizable and he fits into the genre. I would not expect him in Wallace and Gromit or Disney, however, and probably would not like him in those scenarios.
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But then, if I'm watching a Disney movie, I expect neither a Gromit kind of design, or a Zenyatta design! My favorite character designs from disney come from the emperor's new groove!

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They're appealing in a different way from Gromit or Zenyatta. It's a different context again, and what the viewers will accept is different. Not so say that all of these genres can have bad character designs, for example, while Coco is a great movie, the main character didn't have as strong of a character design as kuzco in my opinion, for several reasons. It's not just because it's a different genre, but the silhouette is less recognizable, and even less memorable in contrast to some of the same movie's stronger character designs, like the other main characer Hector. Like just looking at this image I KNOW I'll remember the skeleton dude for longer than the human kid:
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So uhhh, TLDR: Genre and context is important before deciding if a character is a good or bad design. Design choices should be based on the target audience, genre, and limitations of the medium.

My main issue is over-designing. Like Omega Shenron from Dragon Ball GT.

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Additionally I have issues with design that are uncomfortable, like a chain thong or somethin’.
At the end of the day it’s all subjective. I know some people who are fine with a bad design long as it has a good origin/inspiration, while I’m pickier.

I have heard some people say that you should be able to tell something about a character by just looking at them. However, I feel this has lead a lot of Western media to rely on stereotypes.

I think it is more important to make a character unique enough that it can be identified outside of it’s work.

I think stuff like Gacha Life runs the risk of over designing. Yet it is also very limited when it comes to body types. I think it, like other character creator can help get you an idea of a character just be careful not to over do it. Unless they are over the top in a world where everyone looks over the top.

I think a character design is good as long as it delivers the correct message.

What do you want people to think when they see this character? What do you want them to expect, if anything? The most important part of any character design is making sure it fulfills its goal, whether that's preparing the viewer for a subversion, or even just expressing the character's sense of style.

There are a lot of things that go into that...I tend to focus on color techniques. Like, what colors make someone look like a hero? Or a villain? A soothing character, an exciting character?? How can you push the boundaries of accepted color theory to create new and different messages...?

One of my favorite techniques is something I call 'color balancing'. I don't like to have a blob of color in one spot and nowhere else, unless that spot is in the center. ^^ I like to sprinkle the same color around the design as much as I can, give it a good spread. Example:

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The orange of her shorts repeats throughout the outfit: on her gloves, the cuffs of her sleeves, the bow on her head and the bottoms of her shoes.
Here's another example on a different design:

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...Damn, this was one of my favorite design series, and now I want to go back and finish it...but anyway, as you can see, there are a lot of things to think about when it comes to character design. 'Balancing' won't solve every problem, and neither will my precious colors...sometimes you actually have to go back in and draw extra things to save a weak design. >_<

Character design is my life; I could talk about techniques and strategies for days...but to keep this short, I'll conclude with this: approach a bad design like you would an unknown illness. Try your best to alleviate the symptoms you can understand. If you go to doctors for help, get second or even third opinions. Compare with similarly "sick" designs to get a better idea of what's wrong. And most importantly, trust your gut. It may not be correct, but if you have a gut feeling about what a design needs to have, you shouldn't ignore it. The least you can do is try it out.

I think some audiences will appreciate more detailed and some with appreciate a more simple design. There is of course always a risk of going too detailed or too generic, but in my opinion, there aren't any rules that will apply to every story over every genre, which is why I think it's important to know who you want your character to appeal to.

I think a good character design is marked for its remarkability. Every good design has to have something remarkable about it, something you could tell from far away. Be that body shape, hair, clothes, anything!
The thing I like to refer most to when talking about good character design is what I call "the silhouette test". If your design is remarkable and easily identifiable, you'll be able to tell which character is which simply by their silhouette! Here's my favorite example: The Team Fortress 2 mercenaries!

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Well, I think that's it! Ta-da!

I usually refer to my art idol's toot on feature distribution.

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...I actually kinda like the one on the left better? Although I think maybe the one on the right just needs work...a giant heart like that right in the middle of the chest is bound to look awkward; it'd be better if it were a little smaller or shifted up or down a few inches.

Anyway, just because an outfit has a basically copy+paste repeated motif doesn't automatically mean it will be "noisy"; things like that are used all the time in mecha/cybernetic-themed designs. It's like having a repeated motif in a song: if you do it correctly, rather than sounding annoying, it will support the piece and give the audience something to remember it by.

Imo, I think what makes character design good or bad is dependent on how well his/her's personality is conveyed through physical appearance. Is the build athletic? A little chubby? Short? Tall? Beyond that, I think a character's sense of fashion (or lack thereof) can speak volumes about them. Sometimes even using that element to juxtapose their natural build makes for an interesting design

So I think a lot of character design does depend on fashion of the time period, so it's hard to say "good" or "bad" based on fashion because--fashion changes a lot, but I define character design as good when it knows it's function, and then becomes a really wonderful tool for composition within the medium that it's a part of.

So what I mean by that, is that the pieces of the design have a purpose--not as a functional piece of clothing necessarily, but as like a toolbelt for the artist to use when they're putting the character in a scene.

So I'll take two designs that are known as "bad" and describe why one is actually pretty kick-ass and the other is...yeah it's straight up bad, although both are victims of 2000's fashion and neither are...fashionable anymore. Both of these will be Final Fantasy X-2 Nomura because youknow what? He's a mess.

First off we got Yuna, better known as "Yo, this dress dress is just a belt"

At first it looks like a whole ton of fashion pieces that I swear to you, used to be very very pretty (I was a teen when layered patchwork skirts like that was real pretty although...usually they covered both legs. We also liked barely there strappy halters but I was not allowed to wear them for obvious reasons.) but all these random pieces have a purpose.

There are so many parts of this character design that are really light and fun when they animate, the skirt, the hair, the belts, and the laces--and you can see at least one thing flowing in the wind from any angle (although the game engine didn't always take advantage of that.) Since Yuna dances as her fight moves--it's really important that she has clothes that will show a lot of movement.

Also, Yuna has a lot of loops in her design that tell us what angle her body is at--at her arms, at her waist, at her neck, and at her boots. You'll see horizontal stripes used like this a lot, because it really helps clarify for-shortening and adds a lot of volume and appeal to the character overall.

Asymetric designs are also really great for making a character design unique--you never have to go as far as Nomura does, but it's really effective. We would all know this is Yuna from sillhouette alone.

She's a main character who also has a lot of crops from weird angles when she fights, so there's a lot of pieces on her so that if her face is cut off and we only see a leg, or an arm, or a part of her hair, or even just her neck--we'll have something there to compose the scene with. Yeah, it's too overdesigned for 2020, but it wasn't really meant to be always seen at once. Back in 2003 we didn't have games that could do details like this before, and so they really wanted to show off what this engine could do.

Which might be how we got Nooj, who is a nightmare

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I don't know what possessed Nomura to do this.

Nooj is a character that doesn't seem to move a lot, if I remember correctly, he mostly just stands and talks to you. So, the only moving part is his weird hair that has a crinkyness that does not flow the way hair should flow. For a video game, it's uh...pretty boring. I imagine if I were the animators I'd have a hell of a time trying to make him look cool, becuase the character design doesn't give us enough tools at our disposal. The belts are overpowered by the vertical design so they just disappear. There's some stripes to show us volume, but the blue leg turns into abstract nonsense. The power boots are a clashing shade of purple and would rarely be in the scene anyway.

This character design would just fight you the entire time you'd use it. It would have very little to offer for interest except for one top pony.

So for me, when creating a design, I think about function first on a page and what functions I need for the story that I am trying to tell. So for my current project, I felt like I really needed more levity and humor to balance out the heavy subject matter I was writing--so I made character designs that had a lot of flow and simplicity to their designs and big range of expressions that can stretch and squash. Other elements, like meaning to their clothes and researching what they would enjoy came second. Firstly, was always the function and the mood of the story overall.

i would consider a design bad when it actively hinders the media it's designed for/makes production more difficult.

like characters designed for animation that have a ton of redundant/tiny details that end up being extremely difficult for the animators to track (which causes the details, especially stripes or spots to appear like they're sliding across the surface). redundancy, in my view is a huge nail in the coffin for character designs. i think in these cases theres this assumption that it makes the character more distinct the more details you stuff into it, but for me it kind of has the opposite effect. my eyes end up glazing over and i end up unable to remember a single detail in the design.

on the flipside, i've never been a fan of designs that are just solid color tshirt and jeans. it always feels kinda blank to me, like there's a missing sense of personality. the design may be easier in production, but it's also really barren.