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Oct 2019

If he's already upside down then that is a pretty short life story.

It's a reference to an old series Will Smith was part of: the Fresh Prince of Bel Air

I know lol that show was relevant when I was a kid.

I like this advice and I love the chart! That's so awesome to see such a variety!

It's good to take your time when it comes to character design. Do your best to not always go with the first design you create. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your characters:

Setting. This includes time period and location. You may have two characters from and dark ages/medieval time period but one is a monarch that lives in a summer villa most of the year and the other is a peasant dock worker that lives always by the ocean. Location will especially inform the type of clothes your character will wear. If your character lives somewhere hot, it'd be weird if they were always dressed in summer clothes. Occupation can also fall under this umbrella and does a lot to inform the audience of what the character does and what's expected of them

Age. The young and the old don't dress the same and nor do they look the same. While there may be overlap in the attire, for the most part and old man wearing overalls is going to be different from a young child doing the same. Teenagers and young adults often follow trends in fashion and the media they consumes also influences them. There's more to an elderly person then just a few wrinkles around the eyes; don't be afraid to add lines to the face, liver spots, balding and poor posture. Old people are aged. A lot of creators try not to show it despite how jarring it may be to have an 85 year old with the complexion of someone in their late 20s.

Race/Place of origin. when it comes to stories; we storytellers can make our settings as fantastical and odd as we want. At least when comes to human characters, it's not easy to stray away from the features we deem as human. And one of the most important features is skin tone (and stereotypical physical features). To say a stereotypical Asian person has slanted, dark colored eyes, dark hair, and yellow/golden toned skin is to sate the obvious. You can follow the conventions of a race or you can stray away from those conventions in subtle ways. Maybe you have a race of dark skinned people, bu instead of having dark hair, most all of them have light blond hair. In a general sense, it's good to keep these conventions in mind, but you don't have to follow them.

There's so much that can go into a character that can be told visually or through dialogue. This is just a small blurb that doesn't really go into the backstory part of character design. There are plenty of more visual tips out there including silhouette, color palette, and style. That's all I have right now.

Everyone has their own way of designing.

My number one rule is that every character has to have a distinctive silhouette. regardless of the final details, I want to be able to distinguish each one by their shadow. I don't even work with lots of body types, even if they are just the standard manga slim body, I want them to have a specific hairdo or clothes.

I noticed that the designs I like the best have a color combination that is complementary colors (like red and green, blue and yellow) or totally monochromatic (like a character that is all about pink) but lined up with other characters they all have a specific color that represents them.

Sorting out the silhouette and colors, I think that the details are not that important to me. But for sure what is important is that the character has features or clothes that make sense to their lifestyle, age, and personality.

Shilohuete+appealing colors+a design that communicates personality and lifestyle= a character that I can ejoy.

On an additional note. Distinguishable silhouettes are hard to pull off if one's making characters that are in regimented units, Call of Duty squads for example. And posture isn't always reliable if characters are in movement. That's when you should pay attention to details.

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I probably know zilch about character design techniques and this whole distinguishable silhouette thing is something I've never ran across until hanging out on the Tapas forum. It just sounds limiting to me whenever I hear people working from the silhouette first then worry over details. I just always gone with my gut feeling. If a character pops up in my mind and I think I like that! I go with that.

Yeah, you shouldn't follow silhouette as a rule, I didn't do it at all out of fear at the time until I realized it's basically a thumbnail done with a huge brush. It's more of a painting, here's an example of an art challenge I did -

I did all those sketches based on the pun "ghoulseye", but they aren't super defined or even that good. It's more about going 'this is the immediate emotion I want this character to evoke" and later you can adjust it whoever you like. Going straight in to draw that idea might not come out how it is in your head so this frees up a little. Here's some developments based on my favorite ones, after it:

Still early, still easy to change, and honestly pretty ugly now that I look at it now;;; but now I could go and study what I thought would be neat to put into the character, without having to think of their general body. And finally, the final result after a lot of other adjustments:

I wouldn't have gotten this much dynamism and finished the picture in a healthy amount of time without the previous parts! I see a lot LOT of character designers that go the whole nine yards with silhouettes, but for now I'd rather keep it simple.

Someone told me once that a good character design should be instantly recognizable were someone to cosplay as that character. I dunno how universally applicable that is, but it's something I've kept in mind when trying to design outfits, lol.

I think that unique silhouette rule got blown out of proportion somewhere. It really doesn't apply universally in design. It's dependent upon certain styles and storytelling ...if you do it, great but it's not the natural starting point in my opinion.

If I was going to throw out a design tip, it'd be to cultivate as wide a range of facial features as possible.

Even in the most specialized minimal styles, you need a wide emotional range for effective storytelling. And the primary launch pad for emoting is through the face.

don't use too many similar colors. it's a lot easier on the eyes when a character design has contrasting colors.

stay away from using too many details. don't add details to your character designs that would be too small or difficult to draw. they're hard to look at and definitely hard to remember or let alone draw.

•try to have some consistency throughout the designs of your characters. your characters should be recognizable relative to eachother if that even makes any sense... like if they were to be drawn in different styles they should still be recognized as from the same thing if they all belong to one comic series etc.

that's all I can really think of

I skimmed the replies but if it wasnt said already...

Remember that your character design, you will be drawing it over, and over, and over again in different angles and poses.

Keep that in mind when creating your design

1 month later

When designing your own characters, don't be afraid to just follow your interests. Draw what you're into and develop your style that way.

If you break it down, character design is about
1. anatomy
2. costume
3. accessories
4. psychology / personality

Really, you could probably go further and consider things like family history, sociology, etc... but those four are a good starting point.

I made a skillshare class about character design:


https://skl.sh/2OuUhCJ (free access code link)

here's the first lesson and the intro video (please check it out)
:slight_smile: