BY ALICE FONTANESI
STAFF WRITER
Character design is what completes a character by representing them through a physical form. It’s important because it can make a character memorable and easy to recognize. So hopefully, I can tell you all the basics of a good character design.
First off, whether or not something is good is completely up to you. We all have our opinions, so I will try to be as objective as possible when talking about character design. That said, let’s actually start.
Character design is meant to show people who this character is without telling them. Some examples are race, occupation, age, personality, and more. Character design is a form of visual storytelling, so something like a change in hairstyle could change how people perceive your character.
And it’s actually more powerful than you think; the creators of Bungou Stray Dogs decided to do the character designs first and were able to use that to create the backstories for each character.
It’s the reason why we have certain iconic looks for certain characters, such as the extremely feminine girly girl being the popular Regina George of Highschool Land. The typical isekai protagonist is a normal shut-in who plays videogames all day; the typical protagonist’s best friend is a plus-sized dork who’s probably the same gender, and so on. So character design is important and all; let me actually start explaining how to do this.
Color is important as it can convey certain emotions and moods. We also often associate certain colors with certain things like blue with water, red or orange with fire, green for earth, white with air, or black or purple with dark matter. Doing this can help elemental world-building. It’s also important to have a variety of color pallets for your characters to make sure each of them stands out on their own.
You should also check the tones of your character’s colors so that you can tell which color is which, and it can help make certain things stand out like eyes or tattoos. An easy way to do this in a digital drawing program is to make a new layer on top of your character, change the blending mode to color, and fill the entire layer with white. This will turn everything into grayscale, and you can see what colors are too similar to each other.
Your color palette should also be appealing because it hurts to look at neon yellow next to pastel blue.
The clothing your character will wear also should make sense in the actual circumstances you’ve set for them. If the character is a police officer then they obviously wear a police uniform, but if we ever see the character not on duty, then they should have a different outfit like casual clothing.
A character will most likely never have a different outfit every time you see them, especially if people have to draw them, because no one has an infinite wardrobe. It would also affect how your audience perceives the character.
But a character can have a rotation of clothing they wear such as: a formal outfit, a casual outfit, sleepwear, and other kinds of clothing for different uses and occasions. Like everything else here, clothing also tells you about the character and the life they live.
An easy way to tell whether or your characters are different from each other is to draw them all next to each other. Characters with different sizes and heights can already give variety to the characters. Haikyuu!! does this well with its large cast of characters. Height and hairstyle are some of the things that stand out for the characters with its limited palette and clothing options.
If you’re going to draw your characters for something like a graphic novel or animated show, then overly complicated designs are a no bueno. You have to draw that over and over again, which just makes the process so much longer and frustrating. Characters for things like video games and traditional novels aren’t usually confined to these rules since you don’t have to draw them, but maybe show some mercy for fan artists and the artists who draw those graphic novel adaptations.
All and all, character design is important and a skill that needs time to develop. But remember that it is okay to have opinions on what you think is a good character design and what is not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Try studying other character designs you think are good, if you’re ever stuck on one and scroll through color palettes the possibilities are endless.