*Why* did your design your character that way?

Frankly, I decide my character designs based on how aesthetically pleasing I find them ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Other times I just get a gut feeling that THIS is the design I was going for, since often times I get design inspiration out of nowhere but it's a fuzzy thought so I have to task myself to translating it into something coherent.

then sometimes I try to keep in consideration the universe I'm making them for, such as if they're technically royalty, what kind of outfits/appearances/etc are status symbols.

Unfortunately because of how I base my designs off my own preferences, my ratio of male characters to females is, quite honestly, 10:1.... It's not that I don't know how to design/draw female characters - it's just that they don't grab my attention as much as male characters do >>;

However, If I had to design something for someone else then yea, sure I won't stick to my biases!

Great topic! C:

There's a lot of intention behind the design of my comic's protagnist, Midori. Granted, it didn't start that way, and it took a few years to really figure out what to do with her design.

A lot of my motivation for her design/gender stemmed being tired of seeing sexualized/male-gaze type female character designs. It's a little personal for me; being asexual, I get really uncomfortable being constantly bombarded with character designs that push the idea that women exist to be sex objects. So I wanted to design a character that could be cute/attractive, without needing pronounced curves or revealing clothes (I've actually had male instructors in the past try to get me to sexy her up more.. :1)
Midori is petite and flat-chested, her hair's a little messy, and she wears a heavy coat that hides most of her body, but she still comes across as feminine, and I like that about her design.

Tbh I picker her name and hair colour before I decided she should actually look Japanese, lmao. Stupid younger me was stupid and bad at character design. But it bothers me when characters are supposed to be a certain ethnicity but are given Generic Anime Face, so I made a point to give her more believable facial features and body structure.

As for her unusual hair colour (I love how this is a question of its own XD), there is actually a reason which will be revealed later in the comic (no, she's not some weird chosen one with magical green hair). There's a lot of characters with unusual physical traits which plays into a bigger part of the story.

I'll start by posting a pic from my current comic Lalita at the end of the universe, and a pic from my future comic storytale to show off exactly how i design my characters.

Now one: i clearly have a thing for designing Cute girls and their Blue friend. I don't know why but this happens in two other stories too.must be some weird asthetic thing i've got going.

• All of my stories are about girls. i design alot of female characters from background characters too one of story characters. As a kid what kicked my but into writing alot of stories about girls was Tamora Pierce books because I saw myself in her characters and wanted to do the same for other girls. Main character wise they are all usually under 20... around the 13-17 age range actually because my target audience is ideally under 20 (i mean anyone can read it but i want little girls to read it definetly)

• I clearly have a big eye soft face going on here which was influence by disney. watched alot of that growing up let me tell you. Also I can't not draw cute things???? like i've tried and it doesn't work i can't do it. so i've given up and just will go crazy at what i'm good at which is cuuute thiiiings

• all my girls are short i'm a failure as someone over 6ft tall I've always wanted to be smol and now i project that wish onto my characters. DX

• I try to diversify up my characters. Because importantly i believe representation is important (i learned that from tamora pierce) and because i myself see it as limiting my abilities to create and design if i don't at least try. It helps me learn in art and culture and i just enjoy doing it.

• I use ALOT of colour because I freaking LOVE colour man. so NICE. pastels? NICE! Neons!? NICE!!! ANY COLOURS!!! NIIICE!

• fun fact: I draw my characters hair with as much personality as i can because of ghibli and my characters can emote through their hair XD

• I geuss lastly i design characters to fit an asthetic... Example the girl on the right. her entire wardrobe is designed under the theme garden. fruits, flowers, and bugs. lots of greens and pastels. because that is the asthetic i want for her. And that asthetic can change with the story, Lalita has alot of space and planets asthetic that goes into her as the story progresses. And the designs i'm about to post show alot more on my design stuff.

imma end this post with a character design line up of a group of magical girls. that are also some of my character designs i've done.

I designed my characters to pay homage to various people who inspired the story I'm writing. If you're a fan of obscure-ish music, it's not that hard to kind of figure out 'who's who' even though the story is different.
I made a graphic to show some photos/people that inspire me : D There's really not much I change from old photos when designing characters, because I want them to be at least somewhat accurate to the time I'm writing about. So the 'why' is basically that I'm unoriginal and I love the alternative 80s haha.

edit: because i forgot to say... i get a lot of comments like 'whos a guy and who's a girl' and even though, I'm a really androgynous person irl and I dont think of it much... It all comes down to ... It's just hard to tell in the 80s and I wanted to stay true to that haha.

Like @heterodont, a lot of my design comes from my gut first and later gets tweaked. I have a very limited ability to visualise anything, so I start with sort of a concept of how the character should feel and then "draw them to see what they look like" -- kinda trial and error, feeling out the different elements of the design (if anyone's curious about my character design thought process, I talked about it a bunch in pictures on my blog a while back)! I think a lot about the impression the character makes on the audience, the impression the character makes on the people around them, the impression the character is TRYING to make on others, and what makes the characters different from each other.

One thing I believe really strongly is that it's okay for the answer to this to be "because it creates the impression that I want." People like yelling about designs being "impractical" but oh my gosh, nobody cares how "impractical" Batman is, if you don't like someone showing too much skin then just say that's what you don't like. /tangent
But if your character would never get a chance to dye their hair pink and it's never explained and they're the only one with pink hair and that's just because it makes your character "feel right," then I think that is okay. : )

That said,

I don't think you intended to do this, but pleeeeease don't equate "trying to have more representation" and "making a political statement"!! ;v; For a lot of people, realising "holy crap I've been drawing nothing but white people" is the same as realising "holy crap I've been drawing everyone in the world 6 heads high, maybe I can take my work to the next level by varying my proportions!" That's not a statement! It's just trying to learn something new and unlearn a weird habit ;u;

Though I definitely do believe that every comic doesn't have to represent everyone, and I think that's important to remember, too. : )

I think this sort of thing also can lead into representation just for the sake of grabbing attention of people who are looking for representation? As you said, it's no issue when people are just trying to break out of a habit! Not to say that I've seen comics that have done this with their casts, but I know plenty of people who have slapped labels on characters with little to no research on what it actually entails - which I feel is an issue because if you're making the character that specific trait, it wouldn't hurt to try to inform audiences in the proper/positive way instead of possibly reinforcing negative stereotypes ^^; Not to mention, it helps when someone who is also the same as the character find more to connect and identify with them!

and this again lmao. My first story/cast is predominantly white for reasons I still can't really explain beyond just "I was in Middle School." and "growing up by being bombarded by the Hollywood Standard" but I've allowed (rather forced) myself to branch out into doing other Skin Tones, both for more harmonious character palettes and also for the sake of just not making everyone white (and thus being limited to what colors I can use to make them Look Good without looking the same). Like these bottom two lineups, the first is for my first story, and the second is for my most recent story.

I design my characters around practicality, like, what is practical. I can't have a bunch of women running around in heels and non-supportive bras/tops when they are fighting crime, and getting slammed against walls/the floor. I always try to design my women to be more real, like what would a real life woman wear if she was in this circumstance? I have a hard time coming up with designs that aren't boring (for women) since it has been ingrained in the population's mind that female superheroes need to be sexy. To make up that I use lines and designs on the clothes to make them look sexy on women so they don't have to be a 2 piece bathing suit and what not while they are fighting a 10-foot monster. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but when I make a sexy character she (or he) has to make up for that sexyness in other areas (intelligence/strength) and not be just a sexy woman.

My characters are designed on the spur of the moment
I would like to think their clothes also says a bit about their personality / character direction / and abilities

I have no idea why people feel the need to be so practical when going in to fantasy tales, it being complete fantasy?! It's like there's been a shift in comic books lately about scientific practicalities towards tales that inherently defy science in their execution. I want to read superhero/fantasy comics to escape reality. And while some have been complaining about females depicted as sex objects in comics recently they seem to have overlooked the overly muscled men in tight spandex since 1939.

Why not? Why complain about impracticality when all it leads to is chains clamped around your imagination? Maybe you should be asking, why should you be more reserved with your imagination?

My character form my current webcomic Wait...What Is actually based on my appearance and It took maybe three months to come up with a good design but I settled on a style I enjoy and a look that I know super well

@sarrowsmith10 I like the classic Lolita aesthetic so that's why my character, Kamiko, dresses the way she does. From her POV, she thinks she looks cool in it. It's completely impractical for just about any of the misadventures she gets into, since they involve monsters, swordplay, and traipsing through the wilderness.

I used to draw more pinup looking ladies, but I got bored of that. Lolita fashion is pretty modest in comparison. Kamiko's covered head to toe in clothing. I also liked the challenge of drawing something with more ruffles. When I see superhero comics I know why they all wear spandex. It's because it's easy to draw an idealized human figure and wrap some lines around it to make it look like a clothing and not actually attempt to draw clothing -- I don't know if this is true, but it FEELs true to me.

Kamiko's supposed to be Japanese, which is the "default human" in This Mortal Coil since it's heavily based on my love of all things Japanese. It'll be interesting trying to depict people of different skin colors and ethnicity, because the comic is rendered in two colors: black and white. I'm not talking shades of gray. Literally, black and white without lines. So that will be an interesting challenge when I take on more diverse characters.

I always liked drawing ladies so that's why her gender is female. Plus I like the idea of her as a femme version of Doctor Who and buck the tread that we have in our mass media.

Fun topic, right here! My characters are fairly exaggerated in their styles, because I've incorporated elements into all of them that stand out physically, but also tie into their personality/character types/etc.

My character Gemini, went through radical design changes for years, because a few years ago, I came up with one comic story concept that I wanted to put a female lead in, but then I would drop the story for a new one, changing her design in each one until I landed on the story I wanted. My first story was paranormal, and I made her short-haired and tomboyish looking, with a baseball cap (I never really see females with ball caps) where she also had telepathy, and then my second story was going to take place with powerful warriors in space that defended their planets in teams, and the uniforms kind of looked like a cross between superheroes and American Gladiators-like outfit designs. Gemini remained similar looking, but in different attire (she even had her device, but it wasn't for absorbing enemies. They were mechanical dragon heads attached to chains from gauntlets on each one of her arms). I ditched that idea and burnt out on creating a new story for sometime, until I came to my current concept. When I did, I scrapped her design completely, only kept the name, and pretty much made the opposite of what she was.

I came up with the long pink pigtails as a polar opposite to the short black hair that I had before. I actually let my hand flow and improvise on the spot instead of thinking too much of what she should be like. Instead of a jacket, I did a vest and a corset. Instead of pants/shorts, I did a skirt/stockings. Instead of shoes, I gave her bloody hooker boots and had a good laugh with that (only when I started fleshing out her actual character, I did come up with a good, practical use for those platforms, which you'll see later). Late into her design, I used to even have these metal clasps around her pigtails to hold them in place, and then I switched them to black ribbons to compliment the rest of her colour scheme. Even the spade design on her represents the small group of female scientists she works with, called the Queens of Quantum. Each of the 4 members has a queen-of-a-card symbol design to them. And if you're wondering, how a chick dressed like this is a scientist? That's unbelievable. Well, my story is a little weird, but I do have reasons why she looks the way she does, acts the way she does, and has the career she does. But I just started my comic, so I'm not going to tell those reasons why before putting them into motion. All you need to know is that I actually do have reasons behind my designs and characters, as off-the-wall as they may seem. My wife also says that Gemini kind of looks Sailor Moon-ish, which is funny since I've never actually watched that anime. I don't really know if she borrows inspiration from any other character. I was honestly just going for broke, making her the opposite of the character type I had before.

Aside from Gemini, I spent months designing characters around simple, ridiculous concepts, and then I've surprisingly been developing them off of those ideas, with backstories and ways of speaking/interacting that really work. I've got a really diverse cast of characters now, from a cowboy ninja, to a gruff old sergeant that shoots rainbows, to a intentionally overpowered and super-psyched up DBZ-like swordsman, to a secret agent, to a scottish Santa Claus, to a dominatrix grim reaper, to even a man made out of beer (and many more). I like a good, lighthearted story with characters that reflect that mood, but I also like that I have the wiggle room to take these off-the-wall designed characters, and actually give them stories and ways of talking that are worth reading about.