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Character Design Ideas WIP
Raiju
ShoganaiJapanRegistered User regular
ShoganaiJapanRegistered User regular
Ok... longtime PA lurker but hardly ever post so Ima pop my cherry here and throw up some character designs I'm working on for a story idea I had, tentatively called VORPAL. It's basically my take on a select few children's fables (Vasilisa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga, Lewis Carroll's Alice and Jabberwocky) and random supernatural stuff thrown in for shats and giggles, with a modern setting twist.
Given that this is a WIP and my natural medium is pencil and I still need shitloads moar practice with digital inking and coloring (recently got a Wacom tablet and been testing that out, might try to tape some paper over it to get the feel of drawing on paper more), please be gentle (or be a prick and put on your raep faces, either or). The few colors I did throw up on there are just flat colors (and shitty shading, but that's another story).
I could get on my soapbox and explain who or what these characters are if interest is shown but gonna let the drawings speak for themselves for now. Tips, tricks, praise, criticisms, hate mail, and letter bombs are welcome.
Given that this is a WIP and my natural medium is pencil and I still need shitloads moar practice with digital inking and coloring (recently got a Wacom tablet and been testing that out, might try to tape some paper over it to get the feel of drawing on paper more), please be gentle (or be a prick and put on your raep faces, either or). The few colors I did throw up on there are just flat colors (and shitty shading, but that's another story).
I could get on my soapbox and explain who or what these characters are if interest is shown but gonna let the drawings speak for themselves for now. Tips, tricks, praise, criticisms, hate mail, and letter bombs are welcome.
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Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Yar, Hellsing and Hellboy are definitely inspirations of mine, with a good dose of Metal Gear Solid throw in (Psycho Mantis is the man). The guy on the far right is the Big Bad of the story, and his primary colors will be black (no red). In fact, the three characters on the right (the villains) are mainly white, red, and black, respectively for their color schemes (they're meant to represent the "three riders" featured in the Vasilisa the Beautiful legend, wikipedia is my friend).
The 2nd dude from the left I actually worked off a pencil sketch before scanning and importing into Photoshop for what passes for my attempts at inking and coloring, so he has more detail to him as a result. The rest (with the exception of Big Bad) are purely digital, so I think their lack of detail shows somewhat. Like I said, the shades and colors are just practice and/or flats so I have sense of each character's color design scheme. I do plan on sitting down with some tutorials and do some better shades and color but at this stage, I just want to finish up the lines for each character first.
Edit: Looking again, he's def the most successful, because he's the simplest. Just a suit, some scraggly hair and scars on his face or whatever those are, rather than a bunch of traits thrown on.
Yar, one of the tendencies I'm trying to break myself out of is to only draw the upper bodies and then stop right there, ignoring legs and feet. I had sketched the 2nd dude's feet but they came out looking all wrong so still working on his shoes/boots.
As for what I want to do by posting here is basically gain some tips or pointers on how to make the characters look more polished and professional looking. On another forum, someone suggested I tape paper on top of my tablet to simulate drawing on paper (I'm most comfortable with good ol' paper and pencil) and that seems like a neat idea. I also obviously need to work on my toning, lighting/shadows, and colors (one step at a time though, ha). So keep those suggestions coming!
There's actually a reason for the tri-colored hair; mainly because he's not actually human but a magical construct/golem/homunculus/what-have-you made from countless bodies of fallen soldiers and dogs of war (his "true" form is the bigass hellhound in the first picture, sorry that wasn't made apparent). In human form, he suffers from vitiligo (Michael Jackson had it), a real medical condition where skin or hair has patches of different colors due to variances/lack of pigmentation (but here, the explanation is because his body is derived not from just one human but several, so his hair color reflects that variance - but also again, the colors of white, red, and black are important to the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful).
Thanks, I've had a few folks comment that they liked the look of Big Bad and I do too (he was drawn/created before sidekick hero tri-color hair dude). The guy just oozes ebil, and that was deliberate on my part. Running an evil global conglomerate and holding a monopoly over anti-supernatural weaponry while touting yourself a savior a mankind while secretly working to destroy it ain't an easy job but he makes it look like is, heh.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
The character was actually redesigned from an earlier character I had, and in those, he was a bit older looking (but he also looked more like a monkey face- and hair-wise). I wanted to deviate a little from the "grizzled older Auron from FFX guy" design and made him a pretty boy; partly because on the other forum I have a few fangirls of my stuff and I did it for their benefit, haha, and partly because when I say golem, I mean in a more metamorphical sense than literal.
He's not exactly stitched together from body parts like Frankenstein, more like the witch who created him (a character I haven't draw yet but will based on mythical Baba Yaga) took all the corpses littering a nearby battlefield (mostly young men - hence his youthful looks - and their war dogs), split their bodies and spirits apart with powerful necromancy, and condensed all the raw materials into the homunculus/hellhound we see here.
I also kept him fairly young and handsome because he has some history with the woman with the gun (they were lovers once, now they hate each other's guts; he protects the little ribbon/scythe girl and is her bodyguard, while the woman works for the Big Bad as his lieutenant and wants to capture the kid for whatever reason).
It doesn't matter.
One of the primary things to keep in mind while drawing or designing is first impressions. If something looks like a problem, it doesn't matter how many reasons you have for making it that way.... it still looks like a problem.
No matter how interesting the reason for his multicolored hair is, he first reads as a really stereotypical multi colored hair anime guy who probably dyes it so he can look fabulous. Honestly, I think most of the designs already have that overwrought anime look... like someone cosplaying.
You said that Hellboy was part of your inspiration. You might want to look at Mignola's stuff again. Hes a great example of how more minimalistic/simple designs can be incredibly iconic.
Fair enough. For the record, I do like anime (certain genres of it anyway) and am well aware of some of the problems that arise from shounen type serials where the heroes are always pretty, the villains even prettier for some reason (especially if they're really powerful, the mook baddies are usually ugly), everyone dresses fabulously, etc. etc. I also think you're letting some of your anti-anime biases slip through. Like any other medium, there's good anime, and there's crap anime.
That said, my older style of drawing was somewhat anime-ish but never really took on that appearance (at least I don't think so) with the big eyes, small mouths thing going on. I have this mish mash of anime and what I would venture to guess is Jim Lee Western comic style going on (because I love and grew up with both and tried to draw in those styles). But on another point, yes, I love Hellboy and admire Mignola's stuff. Definitely inspired by him, but I also don't want to copy his style exactly line for line. It's just not my thing.
Minimalist... I'll be honest, I just can't do it. I have this tendency to go overboard on details to make up for my lack of shading ability (stark whites and blacks like Mignola's work). This isn't to say I'm not open to the idea of trying to broaden my range some though, just giving my reasons for drawing the way I do. But I am trying to practice some by blacking in parts of the drawing as shown above. Shading was never my strong suit, just pencil linework.
But I will keep your suggestion in mind that sometimes less is more, especially in something like an amateur web comic where too much detail means more to bog down the pace and imagery with. I keep forgetting the basic rule of KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and I'm glad you reminded me of that, thanks.
I feel that I read enough manga, like enough animes, and play enough japanese games where I doubt I could qualify as anti-anime :P . I'm certainly not PRO-anime either, but as you said, its just another medium and open to all the same critiques as any other mediums.
I do feel the anime/manga designs often runs towards the completely impractical and overwrought. Not all... but a lot of it - and I feel you are pulling a lot of that into your art rather than necessarily just the good design qualities that anime and manga have. I certainly wasn't advocating copying Mignola's work, but more as you said KISS
Even anime fans have their quibbles (I, for one, don't much care for romantic comedies and harem type shows/manga). Doesn't mean they're bad, it's just not my cup of tea (pint of beer or what have you) and probably means I won't give them a chance and will write them off most of the time (unless it totally surprises me like Nodame Cantibile did, for a good example of an exception). I got the feeling you were doing the same here. But like I said, fair enough, you can't please everyone all the time.
I have my reasons for designing the characters the way I did so far. If I cared to post up some more detailed information on each character, things would probably make more sense as to why they look and dress the way they do. It's not readily apparent just by looking at them, of course, and the onus is on me, the artist, to come up with interesting designs for them. I get that. But neither do I want my characters to be one trick ponies with uninteresting, shallow back stories either. I guess a balance has to be struck, is what I'm saying.
Short version, your characters should have appeal without you having to explain them.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. These designs are by no means final (as they are just concepts and unfinished WIP at that). Some won't like them, I can deal, but a great deal more folks do like them so I'll run with the majority for now (stereotypes and all).
So far I've gotten some helpful suggestions about toning as far as shadows and such (I'll try to tone down the dude's torso and abs). I'd like something more constructive criticism in that vein (such as varying line widths in Photoshop - I think my line widths look way too uniform = flat and boring), or suggestions for maybe some other (easier to use) programs aside from Photoshop for inking/coloring?
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
I'd chime in with everyone else, but I think it's being beaten to death at this point. Definitely tone down the shading of multicolored hair dude's torso, though. The high contrast really draws attention to it and the muscle definition just isn't executed well enough to want people to hone in on. There are lots of nice details elsewhere that people would much rather enjoy, I'm sure.
In his book he mentions using basic shapes to define the characters; making clear silhouettes of the characters; drawing out their personalities with their appearances (no pun intended) and generally making the characters clear and readable.
In general, my biggest critique is that I think there is to much detail going on too soon. Especially on the colered man. His anatomy isn't that great and I know nothing about him based on the pose or the shapes you used to define him. Even good 'anime' character design uses basic shapes. Just look at street fighter, I love the design there.
One thing that bugs me about what you drew is that the colored man and the man on the right with the coat look almost like the same character! With good character design you can tell them apart easily.
Try doing more basic comps of each character, draw many many pages of thumbnails starting off with quick gestures made of basic shapes and then putting on some details that define the character's body and personality. Then start thinking about colors that fit the character. That's the process Tom Bancroft uses, he goes through many pages of comps until he find a design that really defines the character.
Hope that helps. Good luck!
I like drawing, cartoons, cookies, and shiny pointy objects.
I wouldn’t use Street Fighter as a prime example of great character design. Don’t get me wrong, I love the games, but half of the characters are Ryu-clones (Ken, Akuma, Dan, Sean, etc.) or clones of one another in some way (Sakura is fem Ryu-lite, Guile is Charlie/Nash is Remy, Sagat is Adon, etc.). And talk about tropes and stereotypes. Plus the designs in the latest game, SFIV, my gawd, the over the top muscular beefiness of everyone (even the women, what have they done to Chun-Li?!) are just ridiculous. The game is colorful and beautiful animated, I’ll give it that, but I have no words to express my hate for the design (and frustratingly cheap, unoriginal gameplay mechanics) of the final boss, Seth. Now THAT is shitty design right there. What was Capcom thinking when they shat him out? Give me Bison any day of the week. Kim Possible? Their designs look cute, I suppose, but the whole upper lip thing going on with the female characters bugs the crap out of me.
I’ll also be the first to admit that the scythe was too derivative. I liked it at first but then thought, aw crap, you know, this reminds me too much of that girl from Soul Eater. Maybe I was subconsciously emulating that design, who knows. But at the time I thought, ok, I’m basing this seemingly normal Catholic schoolgirl off the heroine from the Vasilisa legend and in the old classic paintings/drawings of her, she’s always depicted holding a skull lantern, usually on top of a stick or staff – so let’s make it a scythe, that’ll look cool! But I think now I want to base her more off that creepy kids’ story about the girl whose head falls off if you remove her neck ribbon, and will probably make her ribbons her “thing” instead (maybe they move on their own and are sharp enough to cut through solid steel, something kooky like that). And she’ll be able to remove her own head without dying (why? dunno, the original story just creeped me out as a kid and always stuck with me for some reason). So yea, I’ll nix the scythe.
I don’t have very many other images with these specific designs, as these were the initial concepts. I’ll try to put up an older drawing or two of what the earlier characters were based off of, that might or might not help.
The two guys look similar? I don’t even know how you even arrived at that conclusion aside from the fact that they have a hand(s) in their pockets and are in standing poses. Hair is completely different, expressions and clothing are too.
I’ve heard of OpenCanvas, might have to check that out. Some other folks suggested Manga Studio and Sai as good alternatives as well.
As to input, I just wanted to explain the reasons behind the design, not trying to fight anybody. Likewise, it seems some folks here don’t actually care to hear these explanations and just say, “Yawn, unoriginal and derivative. Maybe you should copy this style instead.” Which makes me go, huh? Not literally, of course, but that’s the vibe I’m getting. I am taking some suggestions to heart, like getting rid of the scythe, doesn’t mean I’ll take every single one though.
On a side note, I’m doing these drawings/story as a fun side project, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t make a dime off art, and neither am I an art student or plan on getting into the art biz, if any of that matters. I don’t claim to be a professional artist at all and hope I didn’t give that impression. But I know what I like. I’ll still keep constructive criticisms in mind though as I do want to improve my art, so thanks.
No one has said that or even anything like that.
No one cares about the explanations because the designs should speak for themselves. Nothing original is new/blah blah blah blah blah. The fact is that there are still levels of originality and your designs are sitting at very derivitive. You can do anime all you want - theres a lot of anime inspired stuff on these boards that doesn't get the same critique you are getting - but you might want to take stock if pretty much everyone that you asked for critique from gives you a similar thoughts.
It's possible to come up with completely new things. Just look at music. You've got a handful of scales of 12 notes but an infinite amount of ways to combine lyrics and sounds. The good bands out there can't be emulated exactly, you can pick them out without even hearing the singer, and right there is proof that not everything has been done.
tl;dr: that's not a valid excuse. I look at the characters of all the webcomics I read, and none of them look alike at all. I look at Iruka, Beavs, Moss, desperaterobots (forum members), and I don't see their styles elsewhere.
and if you think there's no original stories, you need to read more.