Tips for Better Character Designs 

Personally, I struggle with character wardrobe. I find it hard finding styles that suit the characters and their surroundings. The only ones I find easy are modern ones, or designed based off modern clothing, anything from a different era or world/setting though? pure struggle

Besides my lack of knowledge on fashion and same face syndrome I think a main issue for me is that I always have that one character in a story that I hyper focus on, like their entire personality, backstory, interests, all of that. Most of the time it’s not even the main character of my stories 😅 Then I struggle to match the same energy I had with the rest of my characters so I feel like they end up being boring.

I remember on one stream you told me my villain looked like a nice guy. I'm glad I know how to make him look evil now but I ended up just actually making him a nice guy 😅

When you mentioned the visual shorthand thing, I KNEW you were going to bring up the "nerd wears glasses" trope. Where's our dumbass with glasses representation?

Oh MAN, trying to get my friends/family to critique character designs is the worst. I always show them and they always say, "it looks good!" and when I ask them to elaborate or tell me anything to improve on, they just say, "no, it looks great!" ._.

These videos are like special podcasts to me. I’ve never even worked on a comic and I don’t plan to but there’s something so nice about just listening

I struggle with re-drawability from the perspective of I don't always want to draw, and I don't know how to be satisfied with anything less that a fully lined, shaded and highlighted portrait

especially the part where you said "How would they wear their uniform differently from other characters" is such a good thought! Like, they can all wear different colored shirts AND they probably wear them all differently - one might wear it as a crop top, one tucked their shirt in, one might wear it 3 sizes too big, one tied a knot in the front, another one drew on the shirt... so many ways to give them more personality, I really love that "thought experiment"! I'm just sitting here, thinking about how people can just wear one piece of clothing in different ways 🤭 gerat video❤

i struggle most with dressing my characters. I have a hard time striking a balance between simplicity and complexity with outfits. When i draw an outfit from imagination, i usually default to a simple pants and t shirt, and i struggle to add visual interest and personality to their outfits, but when i do look up references or ideas I end up making them so complicated theyre hard to replicate. I want each of characters to look and feel unique but but not too unique if that makes sense

I am a blind writer who wants to make a comic book, but the problem with those things is I have no idea what human faces look like so trying to picture a person in my head is almost impossible. Half the time I’m imagining an anime character, orange, An animal, because those are the things I know.

my biggest flaw is diversity if im being honest. usually my characters have similar noses, face shape, body sizes, and ive also realized i kinda draw the same hair over and over again. i want to stick to a more cartoony-leaning style, while also having my characters not look like the same person over and over again LOL, so i tried tweaking little things. her lips are smaller, make her chin more square, their noses are bigger, make those characters eyes little circles, and make the others have normal eyes. i wanted to have some traits belong to certain characters to show relationships yk? like maybe they have the same hair, nose and eyes cause they’re related, maybe those three share similar motifs cause their pasts are connected, things like that yk? but in doing this, i feel like it all makes my style look SUPER inconsistent?? and that little thought just annoys me when im trying to make every character look a little different while also all connected

I second the recomendation of Araki's book XD Personally I think he is crazy, the amount of details he imagines for his characters, even for those that maybe appear or just one episode or two is insane XD But it is a very good read, super inspiring and even if one won't apply all his methods you still will learn a lot. Also, I personally struggle with my characters clothes and style, I try to get inspiration going out and watching what cool people wear because I'm very basic and my characters usually end up wearing the same lame clothes than me XD

Visual shorthand can accidentally play into bigoted tropes as well very easily! It's natural to draw inspiration from other stories you've seen, but it's good to be mindful of why the creator of those pieces decided to give their characters particular traits. Count Dracula from the novel is widely interpreted by scholars as antisemetic, for example, so be careful with the influence that he may have on your characters. Ask yourself why you've made the choices you've made. Why did you give this character a hooked nose? Heavy scarring? A disability? Why is this villain the only woman who shows skin? Why is this villain your only character with skin this dark? Why is this villain the only effeminate man in the story? While it's impossible to always be aware of every potentially harmful trope, doing a bit of research into the subject and being conscious of what decisions you've made and why is best to avoid hurting people and perpetuating negative stereotypes!

With character design something I struggle with is coming up with ways to make a group of characters cohesive while keeping each character unique. I have come up with some solutions but they’re all really one the nose. For example one of my stories involves a group of five main characters on a spaceship, and they’re “uniform” is a jacket. They all wear it differently. The main characters are all different species as well. Two of the characters have four arms, one of them ripped off the sleeves and some below while the other cut holes below the sleeves for the second pair of arms, as an example of how they wear it differently. But again that is very on the nose and I feel like there is more I can do to make these characters’ designs fit together even more, while keeping them unique.

My main struggle is that i tend to make them be just one thing (one color, one element, ect) instead of making them more complex. Like jojo has characters whos name is diamond and they are made of gold and usd electric energy and that wear purple and green (thats not accurate to the show im just using that as an example) whereas i have characters whose name is Asher Rubis who wears red suits and has red hair and red scars and a reddish tint to his skin and fire powers of course, the list goes on

Age, body type, and ethnicity is def areas I struggle in character design. Absolutely a reflection of the media I grew up watching/reading and also how homogeneous my surroundings have been for alot of my life, def something to work on and improve. I find body type esp hard as someone who is not tht great at drawing ppl (I'm a writer first and foremost, artist 2nd), alot of resources on how to draw ppl is just kinda this one body type with averaged or very small proportions, and alot of my characters have been with me for a long time and reflect my limited and flawed teenage worldview lol.

I remember in one of my early concepts for a character she was literally monotone (black and white filter basically) because she was trapped in a place called the void and in the story, she had the color literally drained from her but whenever she'd get emotional she would flash color kinda like how color pallets add mood. So whenever she got mad her color pallet turned red and vibrant to visualize how emotional she was, but I scrapped it cause it got a little difficult to keep that character design especially with all the details so I simplified it so that just her skin was monotone and sometime in like drawings with alot of expression or action she would have these spikes of color going off her (the story she's in is dark fantasy so I thought it'd be cool)

12:47 what if they're not from the same universe? 😭 my world is built around multiple characters from different universes

recently, im truly learning that less can be more. 've always made art ppl didnt get. that was work to get. and, almost snottily, i thought that was the point of art. to pour over it. realizing that's, at least, not how you get things out there. maybe one day ill be some artistic master, but its true - work in the 'classics,' whatever that is to you, first. less can simply mean fewer ingredients. sometimes the 'ingredients' of a work isnt what u think it is. thought of this when u brought up color and shape language. all that to say, some old adages are right: less is more. thanks

I enjoy looking through fashion and whatnot so I don't really have a problem with thinking up outfits for my characters (except in fantasy settings...that is not my strong suit😶) but the thing that gets me is deciding the colour palette, there's just so many to choose from and my brain gets fogged everytime I try to make a choice😔

My favorite character design that I made is a punk aesthetic character. His unique clothing choices show him being an oppositional force to the status quo of a relatively conservative town where he lives. Not to mention the high contrast of his pale skin and dark clothing/hair and his asymmetrical design adds a lot of visual interest and makes any image of him incredibly satisfying to look at. I struck character design gold with him imo. I even managed to sneak a few pop culture references into his design like Green Day, MCR, even a Persona reference.

16:37 on the stereotypes note, it is very limiting and also could be harmful especially to minorities. Like having every gay guy have the same twink body shape or having all your black characters be loud and "ghetto". There's bunch of harmful stereotypes out there so it's especially key to avoid them while making characters. The glasses example was really good :))

WAKE UP MCKAY AND GRAY UPLOADED 🗣🗣🗣🗣

1. Visual design should represent their personality 2. The style choice for the overall story 3. Shape and color language/association 4. Motif(s) Once you have the design, how to evaluate it - Get someone else's eyes on your character (a few people, preferably) 1. Ask their impressions of their personality, role in the story 2. Then give what your goal with the character was, and get more feedback with that context 3. If you make any edits, take the updated designs back to your feedback partners Draw 4 quarters - Do they all feel like the same character? Compare to rest of cast - Body type, height, costuming, colors - Want them to be from the same world but also diverse Ask, can you push their design further? - Without going overboard -- Ex. "Trait" amped up -- Ex. If the cast all were to wear the same uniform, how would they style it? Question visual shorthand - Creates more realistic worlds -- Ex. Glasses on nerdy characters -- Ex. Initial drafts always white and thin Inspiration - Travel - Different media - Detailed backstories (relationships, viewpoints, etc.) Finally - Pull back and simplify your design - You will be drawing them over and over again

3:45 So fun fact: Thanatos (death) from Greek mythology is associated with butterflies lol. So... death!

I always struggled with clothes designs, they always didn’t match or looked tacky, I needed this, thank you so much :)

Interesting video, I like your takes for character design. Character design is such a unique and diverse topic, though without distinguished features in a design, a lot of the time, I think the designs end up falling flat in a medium. For me personally, I'm not someone who uses a realistic type of style for design as I feel it gets a bit limiting for really diversifying characters and giving them a distinctive staple. Not to say that humane character designs are bad in any way, they're very difficult to pull off as the more humane designs are, the less of a direct mark an artist can have on these character designs to really call their own (It's like if you have a story about two girls and some cat and have it be too realistic of a scenario, then it's not as incentivising to a person to read or view in general as it's not really that form of creative escapism that a lot of people seek) but, if humane designs are pulled off in a truly unique and intricate way, woven into a concise narrative, they're very satisfying to visually look at. For me personally I tend to stick with dynamic, simple but expressive shapes which, for me at least, seems to really work in the favour of characters, especially if you have a group. (Though my execution isn't particularly great of this shape assigning prospect, I see the shapes in other media that are very clear and to the point for character design.) It's amazing how many different styles there are in the world and amazing how each of our styles reflect what media we indulge and ultimately leads into an insight of how we perceive the world. Alas, interesting video, your art is appealing. Have a good day and thank you kindly for the video.

Found this on my homepage, it was helpful! I enjoy making simple designs for the sake of animation rather than illustration, and this really set in stone that I was on the right track

This video is so goodddd I love the way you’re constantly coming up with different scenarios and what if’s just brings me so much inspiration with getting my ocs more developed!! Thank you I really appreciate it ❤

I have such a hard time drawing different body types, but that really comes down to me needing more practice drawing those body types

To answer your question at the end, my absolute biggest struggle is colour placement in final designs, mostly with clothes. I have a tendency to want to patchwork a bunch of different clothing items and accessories that I have floating around in my head but the major issue with it is then trying to add colour to such a complex thing without overcomplicating the pallet. Its a nightmare 😭

Wow, this one went a bit viral, eh? I've been away for a while, but glad to see you two are doing well. Thank you for the video!

This is a really informative video, and really easy to understand tysm ! :)

I consider myself pretty good at character designs but I lack in the visual detail like I make a character, give them a bibles worth of lore , make them all nice but they lack visualy Alot so there's a lot of very basic empty spots

17:50 the thing with my characters all being white and tall and skinny with a flat-ish chest is that im rhe reference in a way and so ill just draw what is usual to me and i know nothing better than myself. Thats why i try and diversify my characters genders, body types, ethnicities ect as much as i can but i still find myself forgetting that a character is more fat or muscular than me, or that their face shouldnt look like mine

awesome video, this was all super helpful!

In my experience with character design, I tend to struggle with the little details and making a design finished, to where I don't want to change it in a year and a half because it wasn't "just right" or "enough", or how to make an outfit indicative of the character wearing it.

Would have liked to see the links to your other charac design videos in the description :0

Pro tip : if Your Character has some magic item on Their person thats connected with the story or some other Character : make sure it matches Their color scheme. I’ve seen so many character’s that have a good or consistent at least color scheme, but then they have some necklace thats a whole different color from anything in the color scheme they have. which Can work. But not often.

this video was so helpful for me also I got way too excited at the araki mention

Outfits are tricky for me but my main issue is a lack of consistency in their faces because I try to make unique faces but the one i like most slowly just becomes what they all look like and then they shift again to the next one so I both have same face syndrome and an inability to draw the same face more than once in a recognizable way

I find that giving myself rules on what I need to think about when designing a character forces me to come up with more original and detailed ideas. For example recently I was re-making a charcter of mine that was a cat girl and I was working her into a universe of mine where some people are cryptids The rules I gave myself for designing these cryptid people are 1. They have to be based on a real myth that people actually shared in history 2. The human and animal aspects of the design have to be based on people and animals living in the region the myth is from And 3. I have to integrate the animal aspects into the human forms in as realistic a way as I can So I researched and found the werecat myth from South America and then what countries the myth was most popular in, what the people look like and the kinds of wild cats living there. And that filled on a lot of blank spaces because then I have cultures to look to when deciding names, favorite foods, and maybe certain values and cultural things that may have been passed down that I can use to add to the character's vase personality and give her more dimension

i struggle with consistency with my ocs. like i may like one design for them but the more i draw, the more major those subtle changes eventually become, ya know? it like that one meme, how the fandom views a character and how the canon actually is. frick man.

I struggle so much with clothes 😭 if it is modern fashion they all get either a sweater, t shirt, or hoodie and thats my full range

This was super useful, thanks! Also, what brush are you using in the video?

I feel like i give my characters too many details that are unnecessary, however im trying to fix this problem and im getting a lot better!

So unrelated but im so obsessed with the art tho.....

What I struggle with when making a character is that I have an idea set in my head and I already know what I want them to look like 9/10 times, but if someone doesn’t see what I have put down then I’m fresh out of ideas, for each character I’m a one trick pony

your voice reminds me a lot of sugarr, thats a compliment i swear

im currently working on a story with a kind of multiverse setting, with each character having a different style so i was wondering if there is a specific way to blend different styles and implement them with these characters from very different backgrounds all bickering and generally sharing a space with one another

I always seem to struggle with wardrobe / accessorizing and personalizing, it’s like when it comes down to it all ideas are gone from my brain💀

I really struggle with consistency, keeping a common theme is hard for my ADHD brain. I’ll get an idea and just slap it on a character because I’m bored lol

This all could also apply to animation. though I've never actually animated I hear a lot of the same from some animator friends.

Style and costuming. Our character should dress is a bit of a challenge for me I tend to make them look very plain I would like to make their outfits more interesting.

i struggle that when im making a rounded character that has insecurities and flops and such. im never sure if those things should be visible in the character design, even if its a motif (or however you write that lmao)

Could you please recommend some of your other character design video please? I lookded through your channel but idk where to start

just wondering, what art app do you use? (you're very talented and i ADORE your artstyle :)

My "nerdy" character only has glasses cuz she spends a LOT of time infornt of her computer, it wasnt really cuz of shes nerdy and its definitely clear cuz she does constantly either does some tech or uses her laptop but ure right it is to often so i definitely reconsider making other characters have glasses and arent into tech!

It’s all in the shape language to me tbh. I can make the most diverse characters that look cohesive imaginable but when someone tells me to block out their shape language I’m like “:D??? they’re… that!! “That!!” shaped!!!” but the “that” is never an actual shape. The only thing I even slightly have figured out is that one character is long rectangles and one is some kinda skinny shape but idk about the other two. They need their own things TwT they suffer from being too normal and average-joe shaped instead of exaggerated and personality shaped

Yo what brush are you using for coloring? We might use the same one lol

This music is magical~! What is this song called?

I added eyebrows to my stick men made them look 10 times better

I struggle w consistency and drawing the same character over and over again, some tips?

Great, now I have one guy with a super detailed design and now the rest are going to be way more simple so I can draw them easier….

So I struggle a bit with clothing designs, but in my series, it’s an entirely different world with its own variety of cultures and trends so anyone got any tips?

I usually draw males as idk they make me feel good but i mostly struggle with fashion yk? And hair styles.

good thing: im good at character design bad thing: i cant draw.

What brush are you using in the video?

Can I ask why do you use grid when painting? does it feel better? or have better sense of composition?

You probably get asked this a lot, but what brush do you use?

I’m supposed to think about what I’m going to wear when I’m getting dressed?

I struggle with designing human characters, all of my characters are monsters, aliens, mythical creatures, etc… but when I design a human character it ends up looking so boring in comparison to my non human characters

What brush did u use for intro

Brushes?

mmmm mangoes

Is McKay your 1st name???? I’ve never met another person other than me with that 1st name

I think I struggle with diversity the most. I have a two diverse characters off the top of my head, but nothing else really

the hands im sorry 💀

don't be shy ,give us the brush name (pwease ?)

I’m sorry and I know this isn’t related to your video but when you said manga like may-n-g-uh and not m-ah-n-g-uh I laughed

Hands and feet.

Mckray and Gay

About half of the population overall requires glasses. Please stop giving exactly one character and some old people glasses 😭 Edit: here's some stuff about glasses and contacts you may not consider if you don't use them. Some people wear glasses instead of contacts because it's cheaper than contacts, some because they're scared to touch their eyes, some because they think the glasses make them look more appealing or smarter. If someone does wear contacts, they probably own glasses that they can wear as a backup. When doing a water based activity, people tend to remove their glasses even if they won't be able to see we'll because they can't risk losing them in the water. Contacts can get messed up by water (or rather, the chemicals and germs in water), so even contacts wearers are often sacrificing their vision to go swimming. If someone loses things often, you'd be surprised how often glasses get lost. Some people are nearsighted with good enough vision that they can take their glasses off to read and such, just like how other people put on glasses to read (this is how those people lose their glasses, you'll never guess how I know). All of this stuff can add realism and interesting details to your characters who do wear glasses. You can also use glasses or contacts as a metaphor for something -- they're a tool meant to help a group of people with an invisible disability, an aid that empowers those people but can affect how they're perceived (nerdy, weak, non-athletic, high intelligence are all preconceptions) and if you're looking for it, you'll notice that the majority of groups of people have almost all people who have vision impairments or people who don't. That's not an exaggeration, it seems that wearing glasses or at least needing vision aids is similar to other cultural differences where you'll see people who are alike grouped together more. I suffer from bad allergies and always have, and I wear glasses with red plastic rims; the color picks up features that I want to accentuate while pulling attention away from the dark dark circles under my eyes (allergies lead to puffy eyes the same way crying does), which are way easier to see when I don't have my glasses on.

you say better your character design, while putting on display in the video bland simple human character with no disernable character details.... i dont get why :[ seems like a ........... choice? a questionable one

Hey do you have a discord for art?

Age, body type, and ethnicity is def areas I struggle in character design. Absolutely a reflection of the media I grew up watching/reading and also how homogeneous my surroundings have been for alot of my life, def something to work on and improve. I find body type esp hard as someone who is not tht great at drawing ppl (I'm a writer first and foremost, artist 2nd), alot of resources on how to draw ppl is just kinda this one body type with averaged or very small proportions, and alot of my characters have been with me for a long time and reflect my limited and flawed teenage worldview lol.