How do you go about creating character designs (visually)

Leyelle 2024-10-22 18:04:19 UTC #1

Do they just come to you when you think up the character? is it an active process? do you ever worry your ocs look too similar?

I think many people have go-to traits that they like and use a lot, and I know when I first started writing, many of my male leads ended up looking similar (pretty boys with long hair lol) even if my female leads had a bit more range to them. many of my female leads were also either Hispanic or African American like me, but I've branched out with those as well over time.

Often times when I create an oc, I'll have a general idea of their design, but I often worry that that design is too flat or similar to other characters. however, over time, the characters often start to evolve as I get to know them better, and unique features and mannerisms start to show themselves in my mental image of how the characters look.

Other times my characters' designs are specific to the story, so designing them is an active decision.

Mora is probably my best example of this because I knew I needed her to be a face that would always stand out in a crowd. hence her melanism and vitiligo. though they have nothing to do with her being a mermaid, they are such uncommon traits, especially in combination that they make it hard for her to hide from the man who is hunting her down specifically because she IS a mermaid. Add to that her blue eyes which are pretty rare for African Americans and you have a girl who can never blend in virtually anywhere.

Ultimately, character designing is one of my favorite parts of the writing process, and I really love it when I feel like I've created a character who would stand out in a crowd of other characters in a similar role or genre, like romance heroines, action fantasy heroines, romance male leads, etc.

vitiligo covered

vitiligo uncovered (this pic is so old now TT. i need to make an updated drawing over her with her vitiligo visible. it glows because she's bioluminescent.)

applebun 2024-10-22 18:35:29 UTC #2

I don’t know, it’s always different for each character. My best character designs just come to me randomly when I think about the character, and then I worry I have accidentally stolen someone else’s character design and can’t even remember where I’ve gotten it from. So whenever this happens, I try to give the character some unique details so no one would think I stole the design from somewhere. So yeah, my biggest worry with my character designs is that they might end up being too similar to someone else’s characters.
That said, I do worry about same face syndrome as well then I just do the same thing as above, I give the character some distinct features so they would stand out. In that way I think my approach is similar to yours, and I’m happy to say it works.

ArtGremlin 2024-10-22 22:14:33 UTC #3

They just kinda happen lol. With many of my ocs I start with a general idea and refine it over a long period of time. When I created Mev for example, I knew she was going to be a gorgan, have goggles, and not wear sleeves for some reason. Those parts never changed, but other details did over time for various reasons. Some changes were because “she just looks better like this” and some (like the thickness of her hair) were because “THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENCE AND ITS DIFFICULT TO DRAW”

I’m actually in the process of designing a new character right now- This is a case where I have an intentional design process rather than just randomly cooking up a silly guy, because she has a specific role in one if my stories. I started with a super rough sketch, and I’ll probably do some more refined sketches and coloring on magma later today. I have more fun sketching there.

She’s genuinely massive it doesn’t help that I drew lil 5’1 Victor next to her- AND SHES WEARING HEELS XD

Leyelle 2024-10-22 22:19:08 UTC #4

i think my current comic is one of very few instances where i actually sat down to cook up characters like this, because i wanted them to be distinct even as my art improved. with my novels it's a very grow-as-we-go process. what is this lady's role in your story?

kyupol 2024-10-22 22:45:38 UTC #5

They "reveal" themselves to me. Comes in some sort of "vision". Hard to explain...

And then I use existing anime characters to help fill in the gaps...

remiquise 2024-10-23 00:10:35 UTC #6

Oh, I definitely got some same face syndrome going on. And I'm forever stuck in "pretty boy/femboy" land... That aint changing any time soon. So I do approach all characters, regardless of gender, the same.
But beyond that, I think I'm half decent at making my characters look "different enough". dont think they'd pass the silhouette test. I love flowy fabrics and outfit design. Colours are super important and i think I grasp them pretty well when it comes to designing. I write vastly different (fantasy) worlds that allow me some pretty interesting potential designs. It seriously pains me when I have to simplify designs so I can realistically draw them into comics without each chapter taking a month to draw;; hah
I'll throw down some examples;

(There are 3 women total here just so you understand how bad my feminine male problem is LMAO Middle one in the first image, bottom left with the light green hair and the top right with red hair in the second image. the rest are men.)

But regardless of anything, each and every design is both made to be pretty and meaningful. There is no aspect that doesn't have some kind of explanation, in world or to the eye. And it is ALWAYS important to remember the characters around them can be used to enhance these designs. Not by drawing them side by side, or making them look good together, but in how designs can "speak" to eachother. That's easier for me to explain with explaining characters, so, humor me.

Let's take a look at Halla, the god of Death:

Well he wasn't always the god of death. He is the villain of the story, once a prince that wanted to be more than just a king he orchestrated the prior God of Death's demise and took his place. Halla is the absolute opposite of the current king (his dad which has importance to the story), who dresses in darker colours and purple. So, Halla wears lighter colours (white) and yellow/gold, opposite of the purple on the colour wheel. Long hair gives a sense of timelessness, though that is false. Dude's a teen. He's someone full of lies, so why wouldn't his hair also lie? I mean, the heavenly colours are kind of a huge lie too, dude ain't good. He's committing genocide. The pink jewelry is just a sign of decay in this world, rot is sickly sweet and visceral, but not was alive as other colours like, say, red. The gold in his jewelry not just fit the colour scheme he has, but also gives him a look of status.

So when we look at his high priest, Alvah who basically is nothing but feeding off other designs to get to know him:

We INSTANTLY see they are in some way connected. Similar, but still very different outfits. But Alvah has browns and tans in his clothes, his faith is muddled... unstable... dirtied. Now does that show he quickly he abandoned his old faith for Halla or a possible betrayal? Hm. On to his jewelry, unlike everyone else of this death order... that's just a practical design choice, a small hint to the good guys what powers he possesses. He doesn't wear metal. He wears wood like the other lightning user Eclair. Electricity and metal don't mix all that well. Now. Without the other elemental users to show off you won't notice, so I'll just say, he also hasn't maimed himself. In this universe there are only 2 users of the elements at a time. (Ie. 2 lightning users, 2 fire, 2 water, so on). They usually accidently kill themselves in childhood because these powers are horrifically strong but totally unwieldy and notoriously hard to control. The other lightning user we meet, Éclair, has fried one of her limbs useless and shocked the sight outta one of her eyes-- she's got burn scars all down her body, and the other elements aren't fairing much better. Note on Eclair, even disabled and the youngest element user she is, by far, the scariest antagonist of the first act, before Halla becomes God and thus before we meet Alvah. Him being so pristine is terrifying to the other characters. It speaks to how much control he has over his element compared to all of the rest since he basically has the power of Eclair, but can actually properly weld it. Though Eclair kills like... a large handful of people and forced the MC to miscarry and was the one who actually killed the prior god of death, she could be handled since luck always had to be on her side. Many escaped due to the fact she had no control, so pretty boy Alvah here is totally feeding off that energy and making it a smidge more menacing by simply being pretty well doing the same stuff.

And the worst part? I dont tell these stories and no one notices all this thought I put into everyone. u.u But, hey, it's fun hah

ArtGremlin 2024-10-23 00:29:37 UTC #7

She’s the leader of a villainous group called “The Company”

LunarScyphozoa 2024-10-23 00:56:04 UTC #8

Combination of trial and error and they just.. pop into my mind fully formed. Sometimes it’s both too! I knew exactly what I wanted Suen to look like from the start, but it took me a while to figure out how to draw her. Some early attempts:

There’s one early sketch of her where her dress had a ruffle and a fish skeleton motif on the ribbon, god I wish I could find it.

DokiDokiTsuna 2024-10-23 02:13:43 UTC #9

Always glad to see a thread on character design. ^^ Although I've already yapped about it so much over the years (I think this thread from 2020 pretty well explains my thought process even now), it's hard to think of any new things to say...

A lot of people here seem to be coming at this from the angle of just sketching up designs for their novels-- i.e. designs they don't necessarily have to 'work' with, and that the readers don't necessarily need to see. Which admittedly takes a lot of the pressure off...I've really been getting into it for my recent novel projects:

It's almost more fun than doing character designs for visual art projects. ^^ Particularly in the case of the first and third example, I can add a lot more detail than I'm normally comfortable with, since I don't have to worry about drawing these characters hundreds of times.

Anyway-- some people here have also mentioned 'same face' and working hard to differentiate characters...and pardon my bluntness, but I feel like if you're super concerned about that then you're either overthinking, or you don't actually know how to diversify your designs. ^^; Because in my experience, there's really not that much to it.

I think my second pic up there is a good example, since the characters' faces are very simple and most of them have the same eye shape-- and yet, they don't look same-facey to me. Like, feel free to disagree with me, but I think they're pretty distinct.
The first layer to that is the variety in their expressions: an easy way to ward off same-face syndrome is to use your designs to showcase your characters' normal (and hopefully unique) ranges of expression. Each character is showing something different through their faces AND body language, which immediately helps them read as different characters.

The second layer is the hair, believe it or not. Giving your characters radically different hairstyles and hair textures will also help them feel distinct. The two characters on the left have pretty typical anime hairstyles, with their bangs all up in their faces...but Bantu-Knots Girl and Gold-Eyes Guy on the right both have clear foreheads, with their hair pulled up out of the way. The characters on the top right are on the opposite extreme, with lots of hair closely framing their faces and shoulders (when not in motion, Blue-Hair 'Guy' has their bangs covering half their face).
Add in the different hair lengths, colors, styles, and accessories, and it's hard to mistake one character for another.

The third layer is the slight differences in proportions: in 90% of anime artstyles, that's really all it is. Just make some characters' eyes and noses a little smaller or bigger occasionally; and boom-- you have a diverse set of faces.
This is actually thanks to its interaction with the first layer, the characters' normal ranges of expression. When you combine Gold-Eyes Guy's uniquely mature proportions with his uniquely serious facial expressions, you end up with a face that belongs to him and no one else in the cast. You can't just swap that face onto Blond-Hair Guy, for example...likewise, you can't just swap Blond-Hair Guy's round baby eyes and innocent clueless face onto Pink-Hair Guy, with his thick lashes and brows and calmer expressions. In the end, it's a lot of small details working together that gives rise to a noticeable difference.

skidiggy 2024-10-23 02:19:14 UTC #10

For "Of Lowlifes, Lutes, & Liars" I wanted everyone to look distinctive to start. From left to right, we have Aranthus, Khazmine, and Pavocinis, who are all "outcasts" in the story. Aranthus is the only Outsider (race at odds with humans on their world), while Khazmine and Pavocinis are half-breed hybrids of human and Outsider heritage.

Khazmine takes more after her Outsider mother, with her father's black hair. Pavocinis is mostly human, with Outsider eyes and a slight point to his ears. In terms of designs, Outsiders have pastel skin colors and pale hair, while humans run the gamut of porcelain to dark caramel in color with varied hair colors.

Each character dresses for their respective careers: Aranthus in his modified soldier's uniform, Khazmine in her charlatan/thieving gear, and Pavo's in his wandering bard getup.

For "Apparent Secrets" each character's color scheme is based off various flowers (mostly hybrid irises). From left to right we have Khazmine, Byxx (above), Iris (below), and Zayzann.

Byxx is an archfiend (kind of like a tiefling), with magenta skin and golden hair/eyes. His horns are the darkest parts of him. Iris starts off with pale skin, black hair, and dark chocolate eyes, though she gets her hair dyed by her best friend as a birthday present slash coping mechanism. Zayzann is a combination of animals (mostly birds), including stellar's jay, cassowary, pyroraptor, macaw, and cockatoo.

In terms of how I go about designing characters, it's an evolving process that started out with sketches done as far back as ten years ago. Most have undergone significant adjustments as my skills improved, while others maintain their designs from start to finish.

JoshRaed 2024-10-23 07:54:37 UTC #11

I have no idea, I just sort of do it and it happens. I don’t know how to create some grand process.

Lensing 2024-10-23 09:25:28 UTC #12

I do a lot of face sketches all the time and I usually start with one very loose sketch
just to get the features down and to try out if it works.

For this one I thought of a unlikeable business man who is always angry.
I wanted him to have a monocle and a tophat and a cigar. I didn´t have a clue
if it would work out and it was just a try out sketch.

1 Loose sketch 2 First refinement 3 Second refinement 4 Finish to see if it works

Leyelle 2024-10-23 14:09:20 UTC #13

Hey, sometimes it's fun to realize just for ourselves. I also like designing characters to play off of/mirror/contrast/or counter each other. it's often in their personalities, but sometimes it's visually too. Christopher George and Mora have almost literally nothing in common in their designs except for their height (they are both tall, which is common for Mora's species, and just common for men in general) and their blue eyes. This kind of visually represents that they have very little in common at first glance, but they do have more when you dig deeper into genetics (neither one of them are normal humans.)

Similarly my OCs Texas and Chili were designed to contrast each other: (sorry I only have their character design sheets colored rn, and they are SO outdated)

Her hair was a cool color, so we thought we'd give him a warm-toned hair to contrast. we considered just making his hair orange, since it's blue's complimentary color, but I didn't like the effect it would have, so we went with red instead. Since the goal of every character in this story was to make them as distinctive from each other as possible, so they'd still be recognizable as my art improved (and improves) you can also see the huge contrast in face shapes, heights, complexion. etc. Between these two (male and female lead)

thepenmonster 2024-10-23 14:25:04 UTC #14

How do you go about creating character designs (visually)

"The story needs three rock girlies from the city of Halifax" so I research all-woman indie rock bands to get the fashions.

"The story needs three space gods that are striking enough to stand out in whatever panels they're in," so I think of motifs and colours that are different from everything else going on in the comic.

"I want the leads of this comic to be a black man and an Asian woman because it pisses off dumb assholes. Also I need to improve my art skills," so I buy a book about drawing BIPoC and get practicing while writing the story.

Ultimately, the look exists solely to serve the goals of the concept. Whenever I made the character first it doesn't take long to realize that I'm just copying someone else's ideas because their ideas really vibed with me. That's fanboy shit so I stopped doing that.

drewdoniger 2024-10-23 15:01:00 UTC #15

I started making my OCs mainly because I had a weird aversion of drawing fanart when I was a teenager, for example, Emerald came from me wanting to draw fanart of Blake from RWBY

Yes, this is why she has cat ears

Of course because I was only 15 when creating these characters, I did have the same face syndrome to give myself a template of some sort? I don't know but seriously, these versions of Isham, Emerald, Kno, and Esen-Ali we're just the same face with swapped out hair, accessories, and clothes.

However, thankfully, while in college, I got bored with drawing the same person basically and redesigned a vast majority of them, while Kno did keep her original design, just with the updated better drawing style I had acquired... After starting to draw more variations on body types (which I hadn't really done until then) my dad convinced me to start writing and drawing Reap. Of course my style has evolved a couple times since starting it, as you can see from the difference Emerald looks in season 0

And her most recent appearance in the comic

Also in college, I had previously created Leviathan (who was just named Envy at the time, as I didn't know demon names yet) as to have a cousin rivalry with Kno. So I figured why not Design the rest of the seven sins, and drew this

Which is what unlocked what I love designing the most… Monsters
And after redesigning the entire pantheon to look less human, I realized Esen-Ali should also look significantly less human, so she went from

to

Which in turn, caused leviathan to go from relatively human

to Not so human

And of course doing that gave me the idea to slightly change what Kno, my first OC mind you (who had previously had one redesign from being a pile of possessed clothes to demon girl, hence why she has the scarf hands) to also kind of look chicken like without her shoes on.

TL;DR creating character designs just kind of comes from evolving as an artist, and getting inspired by different things either from media, or from yourself

Jwebtoons 2024-10-31 09:23:37 UTC #16

Really depends. Some characters I have a theme for or inspiration.

Hiro Hinmoku
Hiro Hinmoku (blue girl below) I wanted to create a superhero suit out of a mimic/slime creature, but I didn't want it to look like armor. So I went with normal clothes and added a vizor to give it more of hero look plus leaving the face exposed just felt a bit off. It's not a glass vizor it's the slime/mimic substance solidified to form a glass like appearance.

Cyan and Blood Parasite

Blood parasite I tried to give a unique appearance. I thought about his abilities which lead to me adding a ring around the body. As for body structure, since it was made from blood I thought it should look like a slime. I suddenly thought of slugma from pokemon and experimented with the head to give it my own touch. I thought about a cell/bacteria and made those attena from the head to symbolize that.

As for Cyan I was a bit inspired by Yuno from black clover in terms of hairstyle. In my story people have color words for names like Azure, Cyan, etc. So I made him wear blue, but he's also a wizard in training so I gave him wizard clothes of my own design after looking at many different styles.

(Left to Right ) Aniro, Den, Anaga

Aniro's personality is more gentle like gohan, deku, tanjiro, etc. So I associate him with green (those characters are associated with that color) and created combat attire similar to Deku's. All 3 were inspired by scrapped designs of Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. I gave Den similar attire to scrapped Sasuke design with my own touches. A lot of rival characters wear blue, like vegeta, sasuke, Killua, Grey from fairytail so I associate Den with the color blue. Anaga I actually just experimented with many random designs. Her clan specializes in waves, so her outfit has rings/stripes to symbolize that. Some female characters are associated with red, like Erza, Sakura, Yoko from Gurren Lagan, etc. So I associate Anaga with the color red in terms of attire.

Leyelle 2024-11-02 14:51:45 UTC #17

The MC of my diary-comic is literally just a stylized version of myself, while many other characters are representatives of people I interacted with. For real people who aren't stylized, I usually just take a few stand out features like hairstyle while leaving out most other defining features. I like the vibe everyone being faceless brings to the comic. it might partly be inspired by the comic "the girl from class."

this is me in my comic
Self Portrait

this is symbolizing becoming connected to someone who doesn't truly love/care about you, again, faces are left out of both characters

Many other characters are analogized i.e. I use something to represent them even if it doesn't look much like them or is entirely unlike them, like the vulture and the snake:

Leyelle 2024-11-12 17:27:35 UTC #18

In the new story i'm working on, all the Dominican OCs are inspired by features I've seen on people around my country. curly hair, wavy hair, straight hair, brown eyes, light eyes, black eyes, etc. they run that gamut

hence the contrast. these are both Dominicans

Crusoe 2024-11-12 19:48:32 UTC #19

I'm currently working on my first comic but I have a lot of experience designing original characters over the years. I guess for me it comes down to giving each character something that is uniquely their own even if it is simplified for the sake of being easily repeatable for the comic; Robin has a very recognizable hairstyle with her bun and has a clover-shaped mark around her eye, Cleo has those whiskers and a very recognizable calico colour pattern, and Goose has his glasses and antlers.

Similarity isn't necessarily a bad thing if it creates some consistency for your artstyle but I do know that it definitely helped to first sketch out my characters so I could shift some features and make them more recognizable. For example, Goose the deer was supposed to be green but I changed the comic so every character has a more realistic colourpattern.

Leyelle 2024-11-17 13:45:45 UTC #20

@Crusoe Why is the deer named "Goose?"