{"id":4884,"date":"2016-10-25T17:26:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T16:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.city-academy.com\/news\/?p=4884"},"modified":"2019-02-13T16:58:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T16:58:04","slug":"6-artists-tricks-for-designing-more-convincing-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.city-academy.com\/news\/6-artists-tricks-for-designing-more-convincing-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Artist’s Tricks For Designing More Convincing Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you simply enjoy doodling stickmen and drawing smiley faces, or have gone further into your artistic journey to illustrating books or storyboarding animations – our\u00a0tutor, Alex Demetris<\/a>,\u00a0has leant\u00a0us six professional\u00a0tips on how to draw more convincing characters.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article is\u00a0illustrated through\u00a0his\u00a0specialist art form and some\u00a0of the ideas that we present here are addressed in his\u00a0Comic and Graphic Novel\u00a0class<\/a>, but all of them\u00a0can be transferred to any level or style of character design, from a\u00a0cartoon scribble to a lifelike work of art.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

1. Work out a back story to your character<\/h4>\n

\"backstoryThough the ads and cartoons we see on telly can seem pretty effortless, this is deceiving to how much art – and brain – work has gone into making them.<\/p>\n

After you have decided on your target audience, one way to bring the particularly important characters to life is to get lost in the world of your imagination and cook up a suitable backstory for each of them.<\/p>\n

The more complex the backstories are, the more time they will take you, but the more thorough you are, the easier it will be to identify the personalities you want to portray.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This process of character design\u00a0is the one of the few instances where daydreaming might\u00a0be deemed a good thing!So have a good think. Create a timeline of past events that your\u00a0central character would likely look back on and remember as they ‘grew older’. It could be something big or something trivial, like making daisy chains as a kid.\u00a0Then follow that up by mapping out the logical paths they might\u00a0take, staying consistent with their past – perhaps they now give away daisy chains to people when they\u2019re sad? Without explicitly stating where this little quirk comes from, you\u2019ve managed to add a sense of depth.<\/p>\n

If at a later stage you decide to explain any idiosyncrasies, your audience will draw parallels and attach meaning to the narrative. Occasionally, but consistently, looping back to the character’s history keeps the audience engaged – everyone is always looking for that layer of real, raw humanity to connect with.\u00a0So, if you can become immersed in a character\u2019s history in your head, and can explain to yourself why they behave the way they do on paper, then you can convince your audience to care about their actions and at least temporarily, suspend disbelief.<\/p>\n

\n

2. Consider how the character fits into the narrative world<\/h4>\n

\"characterIs your character in a new world, where there are new cultures and possible even new species? Is your character in the past, where everything is black and white and wide leg trousers are all the rage? Is your character in a space age future riding a vehicle never seen before?<\/p>\n

Pinpoint what\u2019s unique about the narrative world you\u2019re depicting, and reflect some of the things that are true to that time and place in your character design.<\/p>\n

Of course you want to individualise your characters, but don\u2019t forget that the whole point of having the story\u2019s narrative world is to help your character manifest, bringing them to life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a hard balance to make a character stand out and simultaneously fit in, but it can be done.\u00a0Start by setting limits – this helps your audience feel like they\u2019re in a familiar place that they can safely navigate as they mentally calculate where they expect the story to go next. If you keep changing the rules, the audience will feel like they\u2019re being led on and played around with – even cartoons need to be believable on some level. So define the attributes of the place you\u2019re setting your story in – what is the climate, landscape, architecture, religion, and culture of your world like? What species, and types of beings, exist and how do they coexist?<\/p>\n

Then consider the idea that the structure given to you by this process of contextualisation can increase your creativity – if you can create a prototypal world, then you can\u00a0create an archetypal character. Give your character the personality of someone brought up in and confined to this world, but make them special through perhaps a power, or a tool, or smarts that no one else has. That is intelligent\u00a0character design.<\/p>\n

\n

3. Base elements of your character design on people you know<\/h4>\n

\"city Take inspiration from the folks around you, to root your character design in some kind of reality.<\/p>\n

This harks back to familiarising yourself with your character – it goes to reason that this will happen if you base them\u00a0on people you’re familiar with in the real world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emphasis on ‘people’ – it’s definitely not a good idea to base your fictional character entirely on one person you know, because things may not remain fictional for all that long. The temptation might be to stay close to the linear of your muse’s actual life, thereby limiting the\u00a0potential of your storyline. Alternately, you may not be frank enough about certain moments because you feel you’re exposing something about this\u00a0person that isn’t yours to tell, once again,\u00a0limiting the potential of your storyline.<\/p>\n

All of these blocks\u00a0can be subconscious so avoid that trap altogether and instead, tap into a pool of influences when designing a character. The easiest way to turn two, three or more people into one character, is to pick inspirations\u00a0who\u00a0have as many similarities between each other as they do differences – their mutual similarities offer a solid\u00a0basis for your character’s traits, while\u00a0their differences offer you choice and poetic license when it comes to making the\u00a0character unique.<\/p>\n

\n

4. Draw\u00a0consistent characters<\/h4>\n

This is where people can get re\"consistentally infuriated in the drawing process – \u2018why does he \/ she \/ they look different in every frame?!\u2019 The answer to this is equally infuriating but we\u2019re going to say it anyway – go back to the \u2018drawing board\u2019 and spend more time on points 1, 2 and 3.\u00a0<\/span>To draw character-led narratives well, it is conversely very important to spend time conceptualising and writing the characters, aka, designing them.<\/p>\n

When you eventually come to the drawing phase, you should very clearly be able to visualise in your mind\u2019s eye, and on paper, each and every element of your character. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When you actually do get to sit down with pencil, pen or paintbrush in hand, the first thing to do is actually to work out what your character’s face and body will look like from lots of different angles – don’t worry about adding any frills or clothing accessories yet. <\/span>For now, produce a template that shows him\/her\/them\/it from all perspectives, to help ensure your character is consistent and therefore convincing, and then layer up. Refer to point 5 here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A great little tip for when you start to draw different scenes, is\u00a0to place a mirror on your desk. You can pull your own expressions and utilise the shapes your face makes to help you animate characters, making sure their expressions are consistent and logical, and that their physical features don’t contort into the impossible or to the point of being unrecognisable.<\/p>\n

\n

5.\u00a0Reflect your\u00a0character\u00a0in its design<\/h4>\n

\"comic<\/p>\n

Think about what visual and psychological tricks you could use to keep your character consistent through the elements of facial\u00a0features, dress sense, and proportions.<\/p>\n

While there are lots of representations that resonate globally, there are some depictions where reactions are likely to differ, informed by an individual’s upbringing, location, or\u00a0the people and the situations they’ve\u00a0encountered in their life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Different cultures and communities tend to stereotype physical elements differently, and associate them with certain personality based characteristics e.g. is\u00a0a cartoon character that wears spectacles, has long arms and a head of fuzzy hair geeky to you? It may not be to your target reader, it may even be sexy – so remember to\u00a0keep your audience range\u00a0in mind.<\/p>\n

Both physiognomy, and especially clothing, can help to signify a character’s job (they might wear\u00a0a uniform), interests (they might dress in a hip hop or heavy metal style), or age.<\/p>\n

Generally, in\u00a0regards to proportions when drawing, smaller characters with larger heads will often look cute, cartoony or childlike, while superheroes are typically\u00a0drawn in slightly exaggerated human proportions so they tower in height and\u00a0give off a\u00a0strong aura of\u00a0power.\u00a0In between, you have characters that are a mixture of the two – cartoony yet human.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0a technical perspective, it is harder to depict characters with smaller proportions\u00a0as carrying out the extreme physical activities that\u00a0superheroes would, so the design of the character will need to reflect what the character is going to be doing.<\/p>\n

\n

6.\u00a0Think about how your character might speak<\/h4>\n

\"cityThis bit\u00a0of character design is about how you denote personality\u00a0through a character’s\u00a0choice of words. It’s also about the way you can visually depict those\u00a0words.<\/p>\n

So, what are the language mechanisms that help to distinguish characters through speech?\u00a0You could look at writing in a\u00a0phonetic\u00a0way to demonstrate a foreign accent or\u00a0regional slang, if a\u00a0character’s area of origin is an important factor. You can also\u00a0narrow or\u00a0widen their vocabulary depending on their age, type of work or how intelligent they are meant to come across.<\/p>\n

When it comes to drawing and designing words, you could also use things like font to indicate the way a character speaks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For example, an ornate font might make a character look genteel or precious, while I more blocky font or capital letters can\u00a0make it seem like they are loud or boisterous.\u00a0Some people also use\u00a0different coloured\u00a0speech bubbles to convey\u00a0character, and a really good way of indicating speech types is actually to alter the shape of a speech bubble.\u00a0For example, here, the one with very small lettering looks like quiet speech, while\u00a0the spiky bubble makes it feel as if the character\u00a0is shouting.<\/p>\n

\n

These topics are largely covered in Alex’s Drawing For Comics and Graphic Novels\u00a0class, to find out more or join,\u00a0see\u00a0here >><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

For more creative courses, with everything from collages\u00a0to speed drawing, check out City Academy’s\u00a0art page >><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether you simply enjoy doodling stickmen and drawing smiley faces, or have gone further into your artistic journey to illustrating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323,130],"tags":[400,398,1297,327,1296,90,399,401,274],"yoast_head":"\n6 Artist's Tricks For Designing More Convincing Characters - City Academy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We reveal how to do character design right through the comic and graphic novel art form, making everything from cartoon to lifelike drawings more convincing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-academy.com\/news\/6-artists-tricks-for-designing-more-convincing-characters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"6 Artist's Tricks For Designing More Convincing Characters - 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