Oh almighty napkin arm with googly eyes, I humble peregrin dare come forth with a request... could you make some character design breakdowns for some more realistic characters? Like your power ranger fanart? I tried to break them down on my own, but I'm not sure I did it that well... it's incredibly useful and interesting... Keep being awesome, and thanks for how you already helped me anyway!
Thanks for the patience, had to mull this one over. The more complex a design gets, the more difficult it is to break down. Basic character design tips may not be enough…so let’s delve into:
Character Design Tips Part 2!
Before we start, it’ll help to read my last character design post, where I laid out four concepts: shapes,silhouettes,colors, and inspiration. In this post, I aim to build on and rephrase these in a way that hopefully makes it easier to apply them. I’ll be drawing examples from my Power Rangers (2017) fanart to illustrate my points.
(Disclaimers:)
(Ideally, you should already be comfortable with drawing people. If not, look into figure drawing, gesture drawing, etc.)
(Whereas my previous tips were more tried and true, the tips here are more my own thoughts, so they may be half-formed.)
(Again, these are not rules. They’re just tips to add to your toolbox; the more tools you have, the more versatile you’ll become.)
Without further ado, let’s start!
Based off what we know about shapes, silhouettes, colors and inspiration, I want to cover: lines and angles, external and internal silhouettes, values, and references.
1. Shapes => Lines and Angles
Last time, I laid out three basic shapes:round, box, and triangle.
Problem: limiting yourself to these 3 shapes can be useful and fun for simpler designs, but they may be too simple or look out of place on more complex designs.
Solution: let’s go to the next level! Instead of shapes, shift your thinking to lines and angles!
Lines can be curved,straight, or diagonal. Angles can range from obtuse to acute angles. Follow your intuition: what feeling do you get from each line or angle? If I follow my own intuition, I see that:
curved lines = natural, soft
straight lines = balanced, grounded
diagonal lines = off-balance, in motion
obtuse angles = broad, relaxed
right angles = rigid, unnatural
acute angles = slim, dynamic
If this sounds familiar, you’re right! It’s just the shapes all over again:
curved lines make round shapes
straight lines with obtuse/right angles make boxy shapes
diagonal lines with acute angles make triangular shapes
But lo! Since we broke the shapes into their smaller components, it’s much more flexible! Now we can use lines and angles for more complex designs:
2. Silhouette => External and Internal Silhouettes
Last time, I explained the silhouette test: if you black out the figure, it should still be readable.
Problem: blacking out the figure only tests the outline of the design, i.e. the external silhouette. But what about the inside of the design?
Solution: block in the figure and test for the internal silhouette!
If you want not just an interesting outline, but an interesting costume, block in the major components of your design to see if it has a readable internal silhouette. This test can help you avoid boring or cluttered costumes and makes your design stand out. If your internal silhouette is too empty, try adding props or designs. If it’s too busy, simplify it.
3. Colors => Values
Last time, I talked about the 60-30-10 and 70-30 rules for color.
Problem: those rules work on the assumption that you’re only using 2 to 3 colors. But what if I want to use more colors?
Solution: good news! The same idea applies if you split your palette into 3 major values: shadows,midtones, and highlights.
Balance your palette by converting your colors to grayscale and applying the 60-30-10 rule to the values. This is related to the idea of silhouettes; if you get a nice internal silhouette, you’ll probably end up with a nicely balanced set of palette values, and vice versa.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal!” -Picasso
Problem: Coming up with something 100% original is tedious and doesn’t always give great results. It saps the inspiration right out of you!
Solution: It’s a lot easier to steal ideas from references!
Note: don’t just copy, steal! Cherry-pick/massage the aspects of the reference you find the most appealing and work them into your design. Ditch anything that you don’t care about. Make it your own! Make it something you can put your own name on! Below is the reference image I used for my designs:
And below is my fanart:
That’s it for now! Thanks for reading! If you guys want to see any other topics, feel free to ask and I can try my hand at it.
If you want to see my previous character design tips, click here. If you want to see the full-size Power Rangers fanart lineup, click here. If you want to see other character designs I’ve done, click here.
Some people have asked how I went about drawing the Overwatch cast, so I threw together a list of things I think about when designing characters: shapes, silhouettes, colors, and inspiration.
1. Shapes
There are three basic shapes in my toolbox: round, box, and triangle. If I follow my intuition, each shape conveys a personality. For example:
Round = charismatic, harmless, endearing
Box = reliable, uniform, traditional
Triangle = cunning, dynamic, competent (downward pointing more aggressive)
Shapes can also be combined for more complex characters
2. Silhouettes
Block in the character. If I can still recognize who it is, then it has a strong, readable silhouette.
3. Color
Sometimes less is more. Limit the palette for unity and impact. When working with three colors, keep the 60-30-10 rule in mind. Pick one color to make up about 60% of the character, a second color to make up about 30%, and the last color is about 10%.
When working with just two colors, use the 70-30 rule. One color is about 70%, the second is about 30%.
4. Inspiration
Designs come to mind easier when I’m listening to music, or when I have a mental image of something in mind. For example, I was listening to Klezmer music when drawing Reaper, and I was thinking of a chicken when I was drawing Lucio. It can take a while to warm up, so a good source of inspiration is important to stay motivated.
So, now you know how to colour and shade your drawings, however, we’ve only covered cel-shading, with large sharpely defined borders. But how do we get those nice soft transitions, and how does one actually mix colour in a computer program?
Interestingly enough, we can apply the same techniques as many traditional artist have for centuries.
We’ll be talking about Glossing, scumbling, mixing, hatching and half-tone/dithering in this technique focussed tutorial. The tutorial contains animated gifs.
There’s three main groups: the flexors and extensors each take one half of the forearm, and the ridge muscles sit on top like a little tiara. Each group has it’s own unique form. Learning their anatomy will help you design awesomely dynamic arms.
Let’s try to make forearms manageable to draw. This is a body part most artists don’t quite understand. It can be real intimidating if you don’t know the muscles.
The arm has a simple chain design and the forms interlock down the arm.
To avoid the snowman effect, use straight, angular lines and look for asymmetries. Compare the apex of both sides of the forearm to understand the curvature better. Notice that the flexors reach lower on the wrist than the extensors and ridge muscles.
Look for this kind of thing when you’re drawing the gesture of the muscle groups. A wave rhythm where the curve on one side leads into the next curve on the other side.
So many people have asked me for character design tips over the past couple of years. Here’s a whole list of rules I keep in mind with my own character designs.
In no specific order:
Simple is good. Streamline your design to its essence. The more shit you add on your character the more you make it about what they are wearing, and not who they are.
Popular ideas of beauty are limiting. There are only so many ways to make a character conventionally beautiful before you start noticing they all have the same face (i.e. “Six Faces Syndrome”). What most people consider “ugly” or undesirable is actually features that make your character unqiue. Who would you likely remember more: A perfect-faced model or that model’s twin with buckteeth?
Understand typical archetype designs and visual stereotypes to use them effectively. What are characteristics found in a “hero” character? In a “villain” character? In a “child” character? What can you do to mix them around, or play it straight?
Don’t draw the lines of the character, rather: draw the character in the lines. In other words: if someone told you to draw a horse, don’t just draw a plain old horse—draw the personality in the horse. A Royal Noble Horse has a much different character from an Old Sickly Stubborn Horse, for example. There’s a difference between Hark! A Vagrant!’s Fat Pony and Tangled’s Maximus, for another example.
Make your characters relatable. Making a character as wildly unique as possible (a pink-purple-blue haired goth wearing nothing but Hot Topic gear, for instance) actually is one of the most alienating thing you can do for your audience. It’s trying too hard to make your character a special snowflake. Limit this extreme to very specific characters and roles, be calculating and precise about going crazy. It will be more effective.
In addition, find what makes a person special through the boring features. Not everyone has crazy tri-colored hair, but there are a lot of people who have short brown hair. Can you draw five different characters with short brown hair and make them all unique? Try it out.
Silhouettes are important. Are you varying body mass? Are you utilizing basic shapes? We are able to recognize people and objects just from their shadow, and we do it so often we don’t even notice we do it! If all your characters have the same “shadow,” challenge yourself to mix it up more.
If you drew your characters naked and bald, could you tell them apart?
Be consistent in the ‘tone’ of your design style.
All these rules can be broken according to how calculated your irony is for your story. But you need to know what to do right before intentionally doing it wrong.
If you haven’t watched Naoki Urasawa’s Manben Go watch it now!..well if you are into manga or comics and want to see the process, tools and lives of famous Japanese manga creators in a documentary style program exploring all that then you’ll surely like Manben!
The series is hosted by Naoki Urasawa who is the mastermind behind a body of work that includes masterpieces like : 20th Century Boys, Monster, Pluto, Billy Bat and more. I’m a huge fan if you haven’t noticed, however, it’s not just about him..it’s got so many different flavors and inputs and I really enjoyed it and learnt (learning still) a lot from it.
I recommend that you looks it up and watch it if you like what you read.. and I’ll put links to what I found on the interwebs .so if it doesn’t work or if it violates any rights please let me know and I’ll fix it/remove it. (it’s still ongoing so there will be more in the future..like this month of September!..and I don’t want it to stop! :D)
But first..some pictures:
Second comes the English dubbed episodes that I found that I’m not sure about sharing them..let me know if there is other sources that should be here instead or where to buy them..etc
Shoulders: A Reference to Lean On Top Image Row 2 Row 3, (from) Traité complet de l'anatomie de l'homme Row 4 & 5 Row 6: Left (by, Gottfried Bammes), Right (by, George Bridgman) Bottom Image, by Nemo Filipovic
