thoughts on character creation

one mohgzillion typos i did not proof read this shit

some people were interested in this so heres some rambles and tangents about my process for designing characters. ill try not to hate on others TOO much and instead use my own art as examples. also obvious disclaimer a lot of these are just my personal subjective views and im not a design genius (in the slightest) im literally just a bloke these are just my scattered opinions and experiences

where they come from:
my approach sorta varies based on how serious im taking the chara but it usually starts with me having some thought stuck in my head. i get very fixated on specific things and just have them on my mind a lot, could be anything really last year i was super into nails and needles .i had a bunch of them stuck in my bed and mousepad and clothes and just kept poking them into different surfaces idk what was going on with that tbh especially the concept of nails connected by string in a web like pattern really resonated with me subconsciously. but you can see it in my art from that time sometimes. right now i keep thinking about wagon wheels, skat cards, oak leaves, landsknechts, the panopticon and red string, if you look at recent drawings you can spot all of those. further than that ive obviously been very into 15th century related things in past years, which is a lot less vague of an interest. i dont post about these things too much but my friends get to suffer every day hearing me talk about different types of armor for the 80th time. as edgy as that sounds but historical warfare and torture/execution methods has been a big interest of mine ever since elementary school so i keep getting back to it in some form or another. so anyways, thats usually where characters i draw a lot come from. i tend to get more attached to them. but when im making a design for some project or someone else its less intricate and i just go with my first draft right away (uni work or background charas for games). but then again sometimes simple ideas hit the spot as well, wenn i made chas for example i just really wanted a character with red teeth and the vyke haircut so i drew that.

things i look out for:

-amount of detail and limiting yourself
this is something i used to struggle a lot with and still do sometimes. basically feeling the need to add every cool idea ever into one design and then wondering why it looks cluttered and weird. good example is sineks old design here, it has WAY too much going on.

i wanted him to have a helmet ushanka and then also a cape and spikes everywhere and a long skirt thing etc etc dude stop it. as much as it hurts leaving out cool details it can actually help (also you get to use those in other designs). if there are too many things to pay attention to you end up paying attention to none of them because nothing stands out. maybe a weird example but you know when in happy animes where everyone looks normal and cute there is that one mf with heavy ass eyebags? its a small detail but you can immediately notice it and it changes the whole characters vibe. now if you added eyebags to say, a lords of the fallen character you probably wouldnt even notice them because of all the other edgy shit going on ESPECIALLY if all the other characters also look like that. you need to give features room to breathe and stand out/contrast for them to have an impact on the viewer. also its best to have some empty space for the eye to rest and get drawn to the things you want people to look at

-coherency
related to the first one, i like being able to tell what a character is roughly meant to be immediately by looking at them, i get irritated when i cant summarize a concept in one or two sentences or i just dont get what they were going for. hard to put into words without an example so eh. im just gonna shit on this vtuber i hate LOL (after i made that image in 2 minutes i looked him up and apparently hes a university student interested in the occult and thats all it says. alr bro schaut scheiße aus)

- main concept and secondary themes
this is what i like to use to help make a design more coherent as well as add some interest. i have an idea like "i wanna make a mech pilot" and then i add one or two secondary themes like "hes supposed to be militaristic and lobotomized" (yes this is about armored core). then i turn those into visual themes that repeat throughout the design, militaristic=muted colors and tech wear, lobotomized= blue liquid from the surgery and generally a bit fucked up looking. i try to keep it to a small amount of those features and instead think of ways to incorporate them in subtle ways.

- shape and overall flow
this ones self explanitory tbh everyone heard it before you want a good readable silhouette

- personality?
this is more writing related but if i feel like the character just doesnt feel "real" i add some small detail that makes them more interesting/relatable or whatever. (examples would be chas using youtube cooking tutorials or inacio having to sit down after walking up stairs and tripping over his robes sometimes. its not so much a visual design thing but i do think you can tell by posing and behavior and just subcunciously idk if that makes sense. i especially like doing this when i feel stuck on a design, making it less serious by adding something funny helps me feel less burned out. that was the case with dahn, i was struggling to care about him then i gave him funny hounskull bascinet and it clicked (here it did end up being a visual thing but same concept yk).

my failed attempts before i got enlightened



-relation to other characters
if youre making a cast of characters its super important to design them t0gether as a whole and make them visually complement each other. just another coherency thing but yeah thats a big issue with my old OC universe. since lore wise anything goes i just made a bunch of funny monsters that may look okay on their own but just dont feel like they live in the same universe. heres another example by yours truly. a group of charas intentionally designed to look good next to each other on the left and on the right.... yeah no comment



-immersion
if the characters dont go together it fucks with the immersion and i do think immersion plays a role in character design as well and not just writing and world building.(semi related) when i see OCs wear some trendy ali express outfit in a fictional setting the only thing i can imagen is the creator scrolling through their pinterest board and not the character going to the store to buy those clothes. hard to explain once again but its a pet peeve of mine is when i look at a character and i cant imagine it doing things and living in a world of its own. its kind of stupid so im not gonna get too much into it here but but sometimes all i see in a drawing is the artist typing "y2k sanrio dolphin" into a searchbar. i find it hard caring about those. goes for some of my older OCs as well they just dont feel believable

ways to find inspiration and research
once again related to my previous point, what i see a lot online is people circulating the same 5 images over and over again that everyone saw or used as a drawing reference at some point and i hate to say it. but a lot of you need to delete pinterest. i say that with love and understanding in my heart because ive been using it for ages as well (my dad showed it to me when i was 8) but seriously leave that dope alone. im joking you dont have to delete it obviously it can be very helpful as well but if youre taking something from it at least change it enough so i dont immediately know which image you were looking at while drawing your character because its so easy to tell every time. and dont get me started on cores and aesthetics those are like the devil incarnate to me (perhaps another unpopular opinion but idrgaf). i want everyone to make cool knight OCs but if you fr call things "knight core" you need to be taken outback and shot im gonna rant for a sec. if i have to see ANY of these fuck ass images one more time im going to the zoomer headquarters and ripping everyones skin off the amount of times they have crossed my path is insane i even got them sent to me as references for commissions multiple times GET OUT OF MY HEAD
(yes im way too mad about this and my fury is rightious but also dont take me too serously. i dont play when it comes to armor i am a pretentious elitist).
okay that being said i genuinly encourage everyone to seek out information and images in places other than mainstream social media because it just turns into a slop echo chamber over time of the same ideas getting more and more saturated yet watered down. no more mail coif without padding. i really like reading into all kinds of stuff im wikipediahead nr1. reading things that on a surface level arent related to your idea at all can still inspire you to create cool characters, i came up with inacios backstory when i was reading a scientific article about "mechanismen der verpesteten stadt" and it helped me flesh out his character a lot. i also like collecting books about topics im interested in. mostly for pictures but i also have a good one about medieval jurisprudence and trials. heres some of them (im too lazy to show them all but theres more) they also make for a good mousepad when im working on blender in bed

also dont get me wrong im not pretending like i pull up an entire library anytime i draw a knight when im just drawing stupid darksouls fanart i usually dont think too much and just ball it. i use these to get my brain going for new ideas

balls
ok lastly i have another example of a dude i drew yesterday. im decently happy with it its not my best work but id say its a solid design so ill talk about it while its still fresh in my head. The process was pretty much exactly what i was talking about at the start ive just really been i to landsknechts recently (feels weird to use the english plural) and wanted to make one. been thinking about it for a while and sketching but it took pretty long for me to figure out the clothes since the historic ones are already super over the top i had to find a good balance. i wanted him to contrast sinek a lot, theyre both mercinaries but have widely different personalities and styles. also just thought itd be funny to make an young and goofy looking landsknechts since theyre known for having shitty attitudes and pillaging towns when they dont get paid. i havent drawn faces like that in a while im so rusty at it lol. but yea gave him blue, red and yellow color scheme cause you cant go wrong with that, also sinek and inacio both also have heavy red in their designs. not entirely sure if and how i will incorporate him into their universe but we will see. as a secondary theme i chose oak leaves because hurrr. i associate them a lot with skat cards and i just thought it would be fitting for him i think youre starting to sense an aforementioned pattern here he is just a mix of things i had on my mind for the past 2 months or so. i also wanted a more funny light hearted character, almost all of my newer ones are either evil or self loathing or both. anyways he has a codpiece funny boner funny. also hes (fake) austrian in the same way inacio is (fake) moroccan
also sry if you wanted me to talk more about my older charas designs, to be honest ive had them for so long that i can barely remember my thought process other than "yea that looks cool". and a big chunk of them are dogshit anyways i fucking hate gardener