How to Design a Character: 6 Tips for Designing Characters

A character design concept is the first step in the character design process. In concept art, concept artists draft different styles (or concepts) of a fictional world, creating unique character and scenery designs. Concept art allows animators to show mock-ups to the art director and other creatives before choosing a final design.

Whether creating cartoon characters, comic book characters, manga characters, video game characters, mascots, or anime characters, artists create a character design concept to explore a character’s backstory and personality through their appearance. Excellent character design makes for memorable characters that help draw in viewers and drive the story forward.

Character designers must fully understand the character and the story the character inhabits. To create a character, be sure to do research and seek feedback.

• Study the real world. Knowledge of how humans and animals move and display emotions will help you create relatable characters with believable facial expressions.
• Analyze famous character designs. Examine your favorite characters to determine the visual appeal and how the character design supports the story. Once you understand how your favorite character designs work, you will be better equipped to build your own characters.
• Get feedback. From concept art to initial sketch to character drawings to the final character illustration, it is essential to make sure that your character art displays a consistent personality that fits the script. Ask viewers for feedback throughout the process.

Character designers create character design concepts through illustrations, digital paintings, and more. Before putting pencil to paper or opening Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop to create digital art, consider the following:

1. 1. Know your target audience. The project’s demographic will help determine the simplicity or complexity of the character design. For example, designs for children’s books and films might feature brightly colored characters of simple shapes. Video game characters for an older demographic might have more detail and shading.
2. 2. Practice world-building. Think about the kind of world the character occupies to help determine what the character looks like and what they wear. For example, if the character lives in a science fiction environment, their design may be more robotic and metallic than a character that lives in a fantastical or rural setting.
3. 3. Understand shape language. One of the cores of character design is using basic shapes to build a character. Body shape can help to convey a character’s personality and body language. For example, in Japan, the culture of kawaii (cute) features simple, round character designs.
4. 4. Explore the character’s personality. Knowing who your character is and their personality, hopes, dreams, and backstory will help you design a unique character. A character with optimistic personality traits may have a brighter color palette than a character who is pessimistic. You can also express personality through character poses.
5. 5. Experiment with color. A character’s color scheme can also help illustrate personality.
6. 6. Keep it simple. Good character design helps viewers understand who your character is by quickly looking at them. Simplicity is also crucial when creating an animated character; since animators need to render characters multiple times, a more straightforward character design keeps production time and cost down. For example, Mickey Mouse has a three-fingered hand to cut down on production time.

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