Whether be it for games, comics, animation or merchandise, we cannot ignore the fact that good character designs play an active role in driving the sales of the product in question. While good character designs help to drive sales, great character designs grow companies and even shape the landscape of the creative industry. This is the second of 3 articles dedicated to the topic of creating great character designs and some tips to bear in mind when designing your characters.
Personality Characters that lack personality are boring and forgettable. How does your character express himself? Is he loud or shy? Is he intelligent or dumb? Is he evil, neutral or good? What are his strengths and weaknesses? What are his likes and dislikes? These are all parts of your character's personality and you should incorporate all these into the design to create a greater sense of identity for the character.
Think 3D
Design concepts usually start from 2D. Look further and consider your character in 3D. How would it look? Some characters look better in 2D and vice versa. Would your character translate well to 3D? The best kind of character designs look good in both 2D and 3D.
Think in Motion
The image of your character may be static but the character probably will not. How would your character look in motion? It is easy to fall into a situation where the character looks good, but inanimatable due to factors we don't consider during the design process.
Colours
Colours play an essential role in communicating a character's personality. Dark colours such as black and grey depict evil characters with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blue, pink and yellow express innocence, purity and goodness. Comic red, yellow and blue suggest heroic qualities in a character.
Line Quality and Style
The manner in which the lines of your character is drawn plays a part in defining to people what kind of personality it has visually. Thick, soft and round lines suggest a cute, approachable character. Take the example of Super Mario. Having said that, besides helping to define personalities, different line qualities also help define different demographics. Sharp, scratchy lines suggest an erratic and uneasy character which may be more suitable for an older demography.
This article was contributed by Aldric Chang - a creative businessman who is active in music composing and production, internet marketing, casual games production, animation production, cartoon production and character licensing. His 3d animation studio - Mediafreaks - is focused on producing high-end animation work for documentary producers, advertising houses and cartoon animated series - with projects ranging from the animation of dinosaurs to the visualization of natural disasters and something as chic as 3d jewelry animations. |
