How do you manage to draw your characters consistently?

[Evan]

I use:
Ctrl+C
Ctrl+V

[thekinginthesun]

I will give you some tips on that! I hope it helps you

To me, that's a matter of having your character's appearance fully sorted out.

First, you gotta get used to your characters. Take mental notes: character A has a pointy chin, thick eyebrows, strong build, etc. You can go further: Character A's eyebrows are the same thickness as his nostrils, silly stuff like that.

Let's take my dear Eliot from TKITS as an example.
He has a childish face, with soft curves, upturned nose, bigger eyes, proeminent eyelashes, thin eyebrows, light freckles that cover his cheeks and nose, etc. I keep those features in mind while drawing him.

Then, take a sheet and draw character A twice, on opposite sides (this way you can't look at the first attempt while drawing the second one). After you finish, compare both drawings. Are they consistent? If not, what did you miss? Which drawing is better representing character A and why?

That will make you more used to your own character. Soon it will come out easily and consistently.

[DavidPerry]

A lot of the advice above does work to an extent, and it'll definitely give you a passing grade on identifiability for each character, but there's really only one way to do it "professionally." Know anatomy. Practice anatomy all the time. Know skin, muscle, fat, bone, and how they all interact and are affected by gravity. Once you know these things, you'll "see" your character much more clearly. You'll feel their volume and see their form as you draw them.

You'll not just have knowledge of their shape, you'll have understanding of it. It also makes you a quicker, more confident artist.

[joannekwan]

I don't really bother with model sheets as I find them to be a waste of time (for me anyway). Usually I'll do one or two really nice illustrations or drawings of the character and I'll look to those for reference.

The main things I memorize to consistently draw a character are the types of nose, eyes, and face shape they have. Hair and outfits are easy, but it's the little details that count.

[Birdwrong]

I guess I'm lucky in that my character designs are pretty darn simplistic. For my older characters, it's literally as simple as having a few block shapes together on one layer to act as a template of size for each character.

As my designs have grown more complicated in as-yet-unpublished projects, this doesn't work quite so well! I've found the most useful thing here has been to spend a lot of time trying to imagine what my character would look like within a 3D space. Once this started to make sense in my mind, it started to become easier when drawing! This could always be developed further by making clay models of your characters, if possible

[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.