Character Design: Tips from Practitioners

Source: Character Art Tips

These character design tips come from illustrators that I found on the internet, and I found them essentially the same to what Preston Blair had said, but these tips are not as formulaic as those given by him. Therefore, it encourages artists to creatively use their imagination to make their own character, while helping them to come up with a character that stands out. To start off the designing, grab a sketchbook and try drawing some shapes that comes up in mind.

Consider Design Boundaries

Some developments are often needed to make a character design, and I found that many practitioners start off by doing some drawing experimentation of the characters once they roughly know how it would be. Such experimentation allow them to explore possibilities, and arrive at the design that they think is most effective. Some drawing experiments usually involves putting some facial features to the extreme positions and drawing them in various sizes. Varying the placement of eyes gives different personalities to the characters. For instance, big eyes implies childlike curiosity, small eyes are more serious, wide distance between eyes implies oddities while the narrow distance between eyes make the character looks comical. There are more possibilities to the outcome, which can be determined by other factors. So, all we have to do is just draw, draw and draw to explore other possibilities to arrive to the final design.

Different placement of eyes

Colour Palettes

Colours are important as it affects how people perceive a character, so the artist must make the design effectively communicates the thought that they have for the character. The colour of a character usually brings out the personality, but at some instances, artists also uses this to create an irony by juxtaposing the beliefs generated by stereotypes. Such effects that mislead the audience are commonly used in animation these days to spice up the film by making the plot less straightforward. For example, an old lady who wears pastel coloured outfit can be a vocalist of a rock band.

Believable Characters

Size of head must balance out the rest of the body, even in an extremely odd and awkwardly shaped character, a character that can walk must be able to prop itself up. 

Character Illustration by Gal Shkedi