"Same-y" characters?

[joannekwan]

Oh yes, I try to vary my characters by a lot, since I really don't like comics where characters have the same faces, excluding comedies and really simple styles like Cyanide and Happiness. I have a mental library of face shapes, eyes, noses, mouths, and body shapes, and I shuffle those around to create new character designs.

[Stellamari]

I have horrible same face syndrome, so I try to make as much variation as possible.

[joannekwan]

I feel your comic's style is simple enough to get away with that though. It is very cute. ^^

[YoungAdventurer]

Wow they're all so unique!

[AnnaLandin]

I used to have this problem - where I drew the same body type, the same facial shape, etc., etc. - on nearly all of my characters. So it's a problem I've consciously tried to get away from, and with Grassblades, I hope I've made some progress:

As for gender-distribution: the top two characters in picture number two are girls, as are the two characters on the left in the bottom picture - and so is Akane, the little girl in the top picture. I've had people accidentally mis-gender both Akane and Kazue (bottom picture, far left), because they lack definite gender-markers - Akane's a six year old, and she wears blue+shorts, which I suppose confuses some people, and Kazue is very, very flatchested and slim and short, so I suppose she seems boyish, but they're definitely both girls.

[TrustyShamrock]

woah yeah ya did a good job with yer characters. ya also got a pretty neat style so that works for ya too. kinda reminds me of avatar + naruto

[AnnaLandin]

@TrustyShamrock Avatar? Ooooh, you're making me blush! Thank you so much!

[WarkDatch]

I try my best to distinct my characters (physically) as possible, especially "same face syndrome", but just like real life, there are always those characters that will look physically same.

[purrlpankras]

My characters of Two Faced I hope they dont look the same unless they're related o_e

[kazukitakamura126]

I believe this is one of my strong suits in character design I make all of character look distinct so you can easily identify them.
Here's an example of the protagonists and the female lead from my comic Seishin Patona.

[Stellamari]

Aww shucks /////// thank you, Joanne! That's the reason for that style though, I just wanted something that's presentable yet not too time consuming.

[ErithEl]

I definitely try to make my characters for Burning Bright look different! Most of them are actually animal-human hybrids, so sometimes it can be fun coming up with their character designs!

I think same face syndrome comes from a lot of us watching anime or reading manga...we see characters with different hair styles and different eyes and think that they are completely different. It's the noses and mouths that end up being the same.

By the way, I was just talking about this subject with the creator of Bumbleberry Pie. The page I linked has a good example of character that look different!

[Zanreo]

Sometimes i feel like my characters look too similar (except for clothes and hair - I have a lot of fun designing those), especially kinda same-face-y. While I put some effort into varying the faces of my 3 main characters... it just gets harder and harder to remember the more characters you have. I try, at least?

[MoiAri]

As a comic artist this is something you should avoid the most...

ironic being that my faces still aren't very diverse, beyond Hair, mouth, along with blatant facial features like scars, makeup,ect. But its the best i can personally do for the sake of my reader understanding of 'who's who' :/

[ashriott]

The characters I have introduced so far aren't too same-ish I think. Below aren't great examples cause it's easier to tell them apart when coloured, but my comic is all black & white(I'm to lazy to crop my pages and compare them at the moment xD)

I did try my best to keep them distinctive and give them their own physical traits. It does concern me readers might have a hard time telling characters apart later when more are introduced though...

[joannekwan]

Just did this as a quick exercise. I wanted to see how different my characters' faces are, omitting facial hair and other distinguishers. These are the males, might do the females later.

[ErithEl]

@joannekwan this actually seems like a really cool and beneficial exercise! Your characters definitely do look unique

[TheLemmaLlama]

I wouldn't really bother that much, since distinguishing details tend to be a pain to remember and execute the same way over and over again throughout the course of a webcomic

I think if you're good at portraying personality, you'd probably be able to tell who is who based on dialogue/body language/behaviour alone even if the look exactly the same

I'm not that good myself though, so I try to give main characters different hair/eye colours at least just as a shorthand for "character X". I'm not that obsessed about accurately portraying realism XD

I'd probably try to vary characters a bit more in more static media where you can recycle your drawings though, like visual novels

[eschaefges]

I think visual identities are hugely important. 1) comics are a visual medium - so you should be using your pictures to tell the story, not just the words. 2) people's personality comes out so much in their appearance that it helps to reflect that in the story.

i am working on concept drawings right now for my followup series to A Legend (of Some Sort), which will be unrelated but feature a large group of men as primary characters. I have been trying to keep them distinct so that the audience knows which is which at a moment's glance and doesn't get confused. that way, they can keep enjoying the story!

my tablet right now:

[PocketFloral]

1) comics are a visual medium - so you should be using your pictures to tell the story, not just the words. 2) people's personality comes out so much in their appearance that it helps to reflect that in the story.

YES THIS!! I agree with both points so much it hurts.

Anyways having diverse characters is one of my favorite things about making stories. I love drawing characters of all shapes/sizes/races/age/gender orientations. It's part of the fun for me.