Return to site

Everything You Wanted To Know About Character Design

· 3d animation,character designing,character animation

Designing characters for anime or games can be tricky. You may be well-versed in drawing random characters, but creating a unique purpose-built character can be challenging.

You have to be aware of the style of plot which the character would complement. The nature of character, its functioning, and looks; everything matters. Learning to create unique things for fitting in customized roles in cartoon, advertisements or films needs dedication.

An appealing character design must be simple. When the design is less complex, you can devote additional time for refining other scene elements and fine-tuning animation frames. If you look at the iconic Mickey Mouse’s hand, you will find 3 fingers only. This was purposely done for saving development time and fast-tracking the production of cartoon movies.

As your sense of designing gradually develops, you will be able to identify the scope for exaggeration or downplaying for enhancing its personality and other facets. To design a fascinating model, you have to devote hours for planning carefully and iterating through multiple designs.

You need not be discouraged even if you a beginner in this field. The designing process insights offered in this post would guide you through the difficult process.

Understand the Audiences You Would Target

Before you start with the designing, you need to factor in following points.

  • The audience whom you character would appeal to
  • Characters for amusing smaller children are built out of basic shapes
  • Such characters’ sport brighter colors
  • The taste of the audiences for whom the character is being designed
  • The specifications provided by the client

Two or Three-Dimensional design

3D designs significantly differ on technical ground from 2D counterparts. There are some similarities though.

Since 3D models can be inspected from all direction, you will have to design the look of the character from multiple angles. The height, shape and weight of the it have to be defined clearly to prevent any distortion.

You can make a 2D character perform literally any feat with crisp and strategic drawing. However, for achieving realism with 3D object’s physical moves, you have to work harder. If the body of the character is bulky and legs minute, you will have hard time animating it correctly. The blocky character will appear to trip when you would impart momentum to it. For each movement of the character in animation, you have to build a particular rig.

Animating clothes, fur and hair can be difficult. Hence, you need to pay special attention to such details. 3D animation also produces uncanny valley effect which needs to be managed. Improperly designed 3D human faces can pose significant difficulties in animating. The uncanny valley effect has been optimally exploited by horror genre movies. You can also freak out audiences by using this effect brilliantly.

Attributing humane expressions to faces animated in 3D should be diligently done. Else, audiences would just become petrified even at the blinking of a distorted 3D model. For creating friendly looking animations on 3D models, you need to go through extensive anime 3d model designing course available or you can seek the help of reputed animation company for producing flawless animation characters.

Learn About the Medium in Which Character Would Appear

You will have to learn about the medium in which the designed characters would be deployed. This is because game character design would be significantly different from cartoon character design.

Characters in mobile games need not be meticulously designed as players won’t scrutinize them closely. In contrast, a model for cartoon movie has to be detailed intricately and clearly based on plot of movie.

Analyze Character Designs

You need to understand why certain 3D Character designs become popular whereas others flunk. You can spot these all around mostly in product advertisements, organizational mascots, cartoons, movies, shows etc. Most of the characters are feast for the eyes but some are eyesores like the ones made for kids clothing.

Studying them closely would help you understand

  • The difference between appealing and ill-designed characters
  • The aspects that accentuate the appeal of character
  • How the colors, shades and physical features add dynamism to characters
  • The reasons why audiences are attracted towards certain animated characters
  • How you can improve your designing skills

If you fail to make it to look different from a well-known one, you can invite unwanted legal action.

Conferring Personality to Character

A well-designed thing can be an object of fine art. But without an effective personality, it can’t assert its uniqueness. Your designs can also be inspired by personality of the particular character. The personality of particular character must correspond its quirky look. Both need not agree but the element of interest should be there.

When it would react in animation or interact with other elements in scene, then its features would be demonstrated. The static or dynamic aspect can be defined by the drawing of character.

Audiences often look for uniqueness in personality more than appealing visual looks. If it’s personality is coherent and inspires interest, it would attract attention of audiences. When people start caring about character, it would experience commercial success. The personality has a dominating role to play.

Shape Character’s Body Uniquely

The uniqueness can be enhanced by distinguishing shape of its body. The shape of body must be able to reflect it’s personality. Even in a crowded space, the silhouette of the character should make it recognizable for audiences.

The purpose and action of that character should be evident from its body shape. Stronger body is needed for taller and strapping characters whereas small body is desirable for a nimble character.

The species of the character should also be considered. In sci-fi stories or comic strips, you must have come across robots, aliens and talking anime characters in animal forms. Even human anime can be bestowed with quirky shapes that can be fun to watch in animated mode. The species of character should be determined early on.

If you are not able to arrive on a proper species type for your model, just go about creating a unique design and infuse unique elements to boost its personality. You can use features that represent both humans and animals.

You can start by drawing the head of character discretely from its body. In other medium, draw out various types of bodies for the character. Now compare the body types with the design of head. The one that appears to complement the head perfectly can be chosen. This would also add a newer dimension to the character’s personality.

Use Lines Carefully

The lines that are used for creation of character speak about its personality and motto. Characters which are beautiful and can be approached usually have soft, round, thick and thin lines in combination. Things which are wild and erratic often are made from sharp and jagged lines.

Learn About Exaggerating

While designing them, you need to appreciate that exaggerating certain elements would help in conveying more meaning to audiences. Most of them are not photo realistic. Instead, they are abstracted versions of imaginary or real figures. The anatomy may not be accurate but its personality should be conveyed in visually correct manner.

You can stress on unique features of the personality with exaggeration. By equipping it with fluffy muscles and broader shoulders, you can convey its physical strength. By making the hair, it resemble that of a nerd, you can highlight its weirdness. Big glasses and white flowing coat convey the impression of being genius. The important trait of it should be essentially communicated with such illogical exaggerations.

Choose Colors Properly

The personality of character can be conveyed to a great extent with proper colors. Shady or bad characters are often portrayed in black, grey or darker hues.

Good characters with honest intentions are showcased in blue, white, pink or lighter colors. Heroic characters are depicted in bold red or yellow.

Colors can be used in abundance. But, they should make the personality should be more appealing and not distractive. Animated characters which have become popular like Scooby Doo usually have fewer colors. With only few colors, you can design successfully that can be recognized by generations.

An excess of color can be confusing for audiences. Viewers would feel perplexed regarding the interest points to focus at. Proceed with 3 base colors and vary them as per the need of the plot.

Accessorizing Characters

With proper attire and props, you can make it’s trait more recognizable. Some ideas to accessorize those characters include:

  • Highlight professional association by making it sport a uniform or similar attire
  • Demonstrate cultural tie-ups with ethnic attires
  • Cowboy hats and similar accessories can make the background more clear
  • Facial scars can showcase the formidability or innocence of characters
  • Emphasize the particular preferences with props like unique keychain, cool shirts etc.

Your focus should be on using things that reflect the personality traits. This way, it would become credible and audiences can relate to it in any circumstance.

Facial Expressions

Facial expressions are must for all the types whether attractive or repelling. The attitude towards a particular situation can be showcased with proper expressions.

The nature of personality has to be factored in for offering silent or flamboyant expressions. If the face is pale and emotionless, the appeal of it would be lost. Designing for cartoons or concept art should have a wide array of facial expressions adapted to various situations.

If you want to understand more about emotions, you should stand before the mirror and bring about various emotions on your face. By studying your own face, you can understand the effect of sad, angry, melancholic and happy emotions. The learning can be used for equipping your anime with emotions that are customized for different situations.

Emotions are expressed through grimaces of face, rolling or squinting of eyes, and furrowing of brows. Concentrate on these parts. This way you can make it more emotionally vibrant, one which is capable of conveying emotions correctly.

Focus on Simplicity

Never make the design so complex that audiences are not able to decipher important aspects of it quickly. The thumb rule is that it’s shape and attire should be completed within 10 brush strokes. If not, that design needs simplification.

The 2D or 3D design that you have developed would be subjected to further revisions in future. You would have to offer different postures to it and activate it for various activities. All through the design should remain unchanged. If the design is very complex, you will not be able to achieve this.

If you accessorize it with clothes of extensive patterning or tattoos, you will experience difficulties in depicting the same consistently from various angles. The fun and interest may disappear. Hence, refrain from over-complicating them which have to be redrawn many times in various poses.

Equip Your Character Optimally

Endow your character with

  • Objectives which would be primary force behind its personality
  • Mission that justify the action of the character and link various stages of its lifecycle
  • Momentum so that the character is animated
  • Incompleteness to some extent to pique the appeal of the design

Carry Out Extensive Research

If your anime belongs completely to the world of fantasy, you still have to communicate the physical features in accurate manner. You need to understand how the fur clings to an animal’s body, how scales attach themselves to fishes’ bodies, how hair behaves when wind is blowing and other similar things.

For achieving perfection in depicting these, you need to research about how things appear or behave in real world. Despite the fact that it is very stylized, you need to give an immersive experience to your audiences by understanding how things behave in lifelike scenarios. Incorporating your insights make that model more credible.

Your audiences would be distracted if things are not logical or unreal. You can impress the audiences with animations that are smooth and in sync with real life. Even though the model may be otherworldly but the effect would be impressive. For improving the design you need to understand anatomy, lighting effects and other natural phenomena.

Some important things to take care of are:

  • Create variations of your particular character and showcase the same to others
  • Seek feedbacks and their thoughts on the character
  • Ask different questions to understand perspective of audiences regarding looks and feel of that particular character
  • Enquire about the personality of character
  • Ask other to identify the traits of the character
  • Ask people who are not your immediate family or friends for more candid responses
  • Always seek unbiased and impartial views of people who don’t know you personally
  • Seek feedbacks from people who are not familiar with your thought process during all the designing phases
  • Showcase it to people who are observing the same for the first time and seek their perspectives

Summary

You need to fine-tune each aspect of the character being designed. Irrespective of the complexity level of that model, you need to weigh the propriety of each choice made by you. If the character is simple, you need to be more attentive as lesser number of features are used.

You should verify if features are articulated and clean lines have been used. Exaggeration of particular components should be done correctly. Deliberate over each feature of the design intently irrespective of the size of the same.

With above tips in mind, you can create impeccable and memorable characters with ease. As your skills become more advanced, you can join any of top notch 3d modeling companies as an expert character artist.