How do you manage to draw your characters consistently?

[insomniascrawl]

Idk, I just draw them a lot and I sort of get the hang of it, sometimes I slip up, but meh, I'm only human. I keep a couple of reference pics for them too, that helps.

[ahhvecadoes]

I don't have character sheets, just illustrations to keep myself consistent. If I feel myself slipping up/I haven't drawn a certain character in a while, I reference older panels and the illustrations, sometimes tracing over them a few times to get the feel for how my pen strokes were.

Honestly, the more you draw a character, the more used to their design you'll get. If it changes a bit, don't worry about it. Look at any manga's first appearances and last appearances of their characters and you can see quite a difference in how the artist portrays them.

[60Six]

For me personally, it's just practice. Every time I introduce a new character, I feel like there's sort of an adjustment period where I get use to drawing said character...
It took me 4 or 5 pages for this guy's hairline to finally become consistent (for some reason his hairline just killed me to get down)




(the inconsistency hurts me to look at)
It took a few pages to really get the hang of him, and now, like the rest of my characters, I can pretty much draw him in my sleep. I guess ideally, I admit I should have maybe done some practice drawings of him before I introduced him, and I do recommend people do that when they're introducing a new character. Just do an entire page of doodles of the character, draw different expressions and actions, and just keep doing it until you find a pattern that works for the character. Over time, you'll get use to drawing the character. You'll know every little curve and stroke for their face in an almost formulaic sense. At least, that's how it's always gone for me. I see some other great advice here as well.

[NickRowler]

I usually will check back on previous pages to see if the character still looks right. However, the more you draw a character, the style of them might shift a little (a common one I see is eyes becoming larger).

Another thing which is helpful is to sort of have a mental list of common "mistakes" you make. Like for one character, I had to remind myself not to make her nose too long.

[J.Z.Castillo]

For BioHazard I have a master sketchbook, it's like my bible, really. In that sketchbook I have drawings of all my characters , it's color coded and it has a ledger and page numbers (I am so proud of that because wtf, if that's not dedication idk what is!) so I can find illustrations of faces and body types etc. Whenever I have to draw a character I just look into that sketchbook and I get all the information I need. Afetr a while you remember what your characters look like and you start to use your references less and less.

I do the same thing @joannekwan does. I memorize the shape of the eyes, nose, and jawline for all my characters so I know what they're supposed to look like. I will remember other details like tattoos and piercings if there are any who have them.

[TheRabbit]

Model sheets are a handy way to keep your characters consistently. Though I only started using them now, and I use it more as a reminder on how the character looks, rather than as a map on how to draw them.

[JKNNKL]

omg ur name
kanina means fuck ur mother in hokkien
thanks all for tips :DDD

[TheRabbit]

okei... glad to know? Thanks?

[JKNNKL]

lol do u feel sad that it means that? dont worry people only use hokkien in certain parts of china and singapore :-))

[TheRabbit]

I just felt confused.

[Herofeeder]

i made basic drawings of my characters and i have them on google drive and on psd files .so each time im making a comic i pastem there and i have them drawn ...but im not making a manga so i dont know how efficient that will be for you since my comic is pretty simple

[Shanny8]

Pretty the same echoed by some other posts; I dont do character sheets- I basically just wing it more or less during the actual work. Along the way I start to get a feel for how I want this character to look every time I draw them.

[mariusthered]

i use poser 10 ! it's a great tool for making reference pics to sketch over

[AnnaLandin]

In terms of facial features - well, I don't. I have a mild/partial case of face-blindness, so I mess it up constantly because my brain doesn't work right.

In terms of everything else - I either reference a model sheet, or I have the previous page open when I draw the new one, so I have a visual reference on hand.

[Mharz]

There are questions I keep instinctively in my mind when I draw my characters

-What are the shapes of every body part?
-how does the faces/eyes/nose/mouth/arms/legs' shape look like?
-are they long? short? pointy? squarish? round?
-are they straight? curvy?
-how steep are the angles?
-are they thin or wide?

-How far apart each body parts are from each other?
-does the gap between the eyes near or far? etc

What are each of the parts sizes in relation to each other?
-is the eyes bigger than the nose? etc.
-is the head bigger than the body
-how many heads does the entire body measure up?
-does the hand cover up the entire face?

Believe it or not characters has their own sets of shapes and measurements and that what's make them who they are. Any slight adjustments can cause the character to go "off-model" I did a short overview about this right here.

I don't use character sheets for my OCs because I already memorized them but if it's someone unfamiliar I'd totally wanna have them around just so I can answer all these questions.

That's just me anyway, don't mind me. I'm just gonna crawl back into my hole.

[Candel_and_Goji]

really good tips! going off of this, i'd say that once you get to the point of understanding both anatomy and what you want your characters to represent it helps to study shape language and learn how to convey the personalities of your characters visually. in this example (the silhouettes of the protags of parlor tricks), you can see that balor (the uh... pig guy) is made of soft, sweeping rounded shapes to create a subliminal feeling of safety around their character. puck, meanwhile, is small and thin, giving him a more spritely, energetic appearance.

the shapes in a character's form all subtly convey different meanings and feelings, and it's good to practice with them to see what will best suit your personal characters and story! : )

[kazukitakamura126]

The way keep my characters consist looking is using character concepts or reference sheets. They help keep the details the same for the most part. However, you never draw the one thing the same way every single times there will always be some differences. It seems like one of the many beauties of art as the character evolves over time. You can see my comic In The Midst and how it changes subtly over time. Profession example of this is D. Gray Man where the characters don't always look the same in every drawing.

[Kamikaze]

I definitely suggest using model sheets and character references. I use them all the time, and they really help us stay on point. They're also super helpful for providing things like color references as well. Here's what they look like:

On each one I focus on a close up of the eyes, and a full body relaxed pose. I grab the base colors, and shade colors to make sure they're consistent as well. When it comes to giving certain kinds of lighting effects we use these same colors and then add in layer overlays for color correction and ambient lighting.

Another reference tool that's really helped is the little mobile app called Handy Artists Tool. It's got a bunch of 3D models that you can use, and light it in different ways. You can even change how many lights are on, and what color they are!

[Zanreo]

I mostly just reference from older drawings, should probably do model sheets but I have a million recurring characters and drawing sheets for all of them would take Forever...

[Ara_Personica]

I still haven't gotten it right XD I don't worry about it overmuch though. I figure it comes with practice.

I think it helps to have a distinctive design for the character. Color helps A LOT I think, but if it's black and white, I feel like the good ole advice about character silhouette's comes to the fore. Keeping the same basic hair style's, face shapes, etc. I follow a lot of the advice given for animation character deign, and think of the characters in "shapes" a lot, rather than features.

I don't keep model sheets, though I need to (mostly to keep color consistent...)

Here are some of my attempts for my character Aydin: