How do I make these characters look more different? (disregard)

[JoshRaed]

I mainly mean their faces, as lined up at the bottom. To be clear, while it doesn’t show at that angle they do in fact have different noses.

Edit: I was told they look too similar by someone else and blindly believed it. I no longer believe that. I don't think I would have even considered the idea that their faces were too similar if someone hadn't brought it up. I think that different noses, different eyes, different head shapes, different lips and different jawlines is more than enough to not have same face syndrome. I don't know why I thought I needed help with this. Sorry I bothered you all.

[moontokkym]

The answer is going to be the same as every single topic you've posted here:

• look for reference photos and study them

• test out different ways of doing things with sketches

• get into the habit of drawing every day/as much as is regularly possible for you

• we cannot baby you nor help you to do every little thing, you have to work stuff out for yourself through practice to gain expérience.

TL; DR: you keep asking questions where the answer is "we can't help unless we physically draw it for you at this point, and if that's what you want you'll have to pay us a fair wage." Please, please please please for once try and work these things out for yourself, so many threads have given you so many brilliant ressources and if you looked at them and learned from them you would not have this problem.

Go back to the drawing board and actively sketch different nose types from photos for a couple of hours and work to symplify them so they go with the characters and stop coming on the forum for every minute little thing. Gain an identity through experience.

[JoshRaed]

I assumed this would just be a regular advice question, because earlier I saw one saying “How to I make my dialogue sound more natural” or something and this seemed very similar to that.

What would you say if I had posted that instead of someone else posting it?

[JoshRaed]

None of the resources are about making faces more different looking. I’ve watched all of the videos. None of them say that. None of the pictures do either. I also googled the concept.

[moontokkym]

The difference between them and you is that I know in your case these threads are a tool to procrastination and time wasting on your part. I've seen your numerous threads, if you spent that time drawing and learning you would be so much further ahead in your comic. The best and only advice you need right now given context is "you need to just go and draw."

The ressources given to you aren't on faces, true, but at this point you know how to Google, you have names of artists who give good advice on the internet, you should not have to be spoon-fed ressources. The people who gave you those ressources found them on their own. They're not hard to find, this is the internet.

Also, those ressources do help for faces. You've been given multiple videos about using shape language, sketching, anatomy, etc... Just in the past week. All of that is stuff you can use to work on your faces.

Don't know how to use shape language? Watch the videos again and try sketching some stuff while trying to use it. That's how everyone else learned.

Don't know how to sketch efficiently? Watch the videos again and try applying their tips and see how that works.

You are having trouble applying tips because you lack experience, but instead of sticking at it you assume that people telling you more tips is suddently going to make them magically work. It won't. You not only have to learn the tips you have to learn to apply them.

There is no other way to learn to apply them than spending hours upon hours trying to apply them until they become natural to you. No shortcuts. No secrets. Just work.

Searching for workarounds is a fruitless endevour and you've wasted not only your own time but other people's who've tried to help you out and everyone is loosing patience.

Please, for the love of all that is sacred and sullied in the world, just go and draw and TRY instead of falling before the first hurdle even comes into view.

[VividRunning]

For me, I just study faces and such. You’ll start noticing the differences, trust me.
that’s what you want to do for everything, just study.

[JoshRaed]

I wouldn’t have asked this question if I hadn’t already drawn something today. It’s a whole rule I have now.

[moontokkym]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying you haven't drawn at all today.

I'm saying you haven't done the work to try and resolve your problem with research sketches, working with a specific goal to test things out. Doing a lot of face studies and working out how to translate that into your style and into your characters. Seeing as you always ask "how many" you keep going until you have something workable say at least 10 portrait studies from photos in a realistic style and then translate those ten faces into your style and actually think about it while you're doing it. Make choices on your own.

The question you are asking can be answered only by you alone making choices. No one is going to draw you a nose and say "do this" because it won't help you learn to do it yourself.

[JoshRaed]

I did all that tutorial stuff. It’s how I finally fixed that one drawing of Heiroe I hate so much. It fundamentally changed how i’m going to draw for the rest of my time as an artist basically.

Also I tried using shape language. I broke down characters I drew into only the shapes. I’ve actually found a solution to most of the shape stuff and will have a new set of drawings that facilitate these new shapes tomorrow when I can. Unless my assignments take up too much time, then I don’t know.

[JoshRaed]

I fully plan to do all that stuff. I didn’t feel lost in the middle of some ink and paper ocean without the input of the internet. I actually might not even change the faces at all, because I’ve seen a lot of talented artists do just as well or worse at differentiating faces than I did, so I might not need to change anything. I just wanted to ask for some form advice on it, mainly because I kind of wanted to set up a pattern of taking advice properly. I guess it didn’t pan out like i’d hoped.

I started this thread before bed, I would not be drawing right now if I put my phone down.

[JoshRaed]

Okay. I’m going to look up stuff like “mom” “punk woman” “daughter” “creepy child” “wednesday adams” “femme man” and “vietnamese boy” to see the results. The takeaway from those searches will be in my next set of drawings I guess.

[JoshRaed]

Seeing as you always ask "how many" you keep going until you have something workable say at least 10 portrait studies from photos in a realistic style and then translate those ten faces into your style and actually think about it while you're doing it. Make choices on your own.

This is kind of contradictory, but i’m going to accept it. I’ll be back later with 10 realistic studies and their respective versions in my own style.

[JoshRaed]

No one is going to draw you a nose and say "do this" because it won't help you learn to do it yourself.

I… should I just bluntly ask for people NOT to do that when I ask for advice? Because I would genuinely hate that if someone said it in this thread.

[choilyriel]

In my opinion, you need a lot of practice in regarding the character itself. Me, myself I used to practice by tracing art from artists on twitter. It will help you to understand the process.

Also, one of the way to make your characters looks different is to try and draw variety of eye shape, face shape (male chara usually have longer face and female chara usually have a round face) and also each character needs to have distinctive style too (as in fashion, clothes).

For example, I take this character named kanae from a BL manga that I've read

I've read a lot of mangas but I vividly remember him just because of his design. The thing that stood him out is the two colored hair and the cat like eyes.

I would suggest go on YouTube for a lot of tutorial or go on twitch to see the process of professional artists does their cuz that's how I learn and slowly developed. You can also use 3d model to help you.

This is my drawing 2 years ago

This is my drawing now (I've been using 3d model to draw anatomy)

A snippet from my webtoon

These two YouTubers are the one who helped me a lot on my journey, I highly recommend them

1. Tppo took paid classes from professional artist and break them down to make it easier for us beginners to understand.

1. Naoki sensei is a professional artist from Japan. He's been designing a lot of magazine cover and had Collab with a lot of big companies. He will fix art by changing the background colour, adding light source, without changing your art entirely and you can learn a lot if you're a beginner

I hope this helps

[NickRowler]

You are struggling with an issue I have seen many beginners deal with where you created a style which is too limiting. If you really want to add variation, you have to be willing to push yourself outside your comfort zone.

I feel like I could say stuff like, experiment with more exaggerated face shape, eyes, noses, lips, eyebrows, etc. But if beginner’s fall back is “that doesn’t fit my style”, then they aren’t going to improve and get better.

I would also recommend experimenting with hair styles. Stuff like Sailor Moon or Equestria Girls have very similar faces but very stylized hair.

[Lensing]

This is really good advice and I think @JoshRaed could level up his skills very fast with
just 10 minutes of tracing, 10 minutes of trying to draw the tracing.
That´s just 20 minutes of training every day. Do that one month and you´ll be
surprised

[JoshRaed]

Yeah i’m going to try it.

[JoshRaed]

I’ll try this. Thank you. I think it will help.

[Kaisei]

This is kind of the "duh" answer, but you make characters look different by giving them different features. You have that going with the hairstyles. What other differences can you add? Height, high/low cheekbones, thick/thin eyebrows, strong/rounded chins, shoulder breadth, etc.

I suggest finding a book on drawing people (or online equivalent course) and working your way through it, drawing the examples and doing the recommended activities. If you expand your drawing range, you'll be able to differentiate your characters more intuitively.

On a general critique: They have no eyebrows, and their eyes look intense (maybe they are wearing eyeliner and that's intentional).

[VividRunning]

LOL. No, I don't mean particularly for your characters. I mean before you start making your own characters, you should study the differences in faces--for example, what a muscular vs round face looks like. I know it's cliche but...know the rules before you break them.