Touhou Design Phylosophy Study and OC Tips and Tricks
I see many people struggle with creating Touhou OCs so I figured I would try and analyze ZUN’s character designs and briefly explain what makes them stand out. If you have any other observations or corrections perhaps, don’t be afraid to message me.
What most people remember about Touhou designs are the elaborate or strange hats. That however often gets mistaken for the thing that’s most striking about each character, which is their silhouette. Notice how two of the characters below don’t have any headdress at all, yet their design is easy to recognize.
Knowingly or unknowingly, ZUN understands, that fun character designs have strong silhouettes. He even utilizes shape language to convey character through looks.
Circles - Charisma, safety, friendliness, charm, cuteness and innocence
Rectangles - Conformity, uniformity, balance, stability and reliablility
Triangles - Unpredictability, danger, malice, cunningness, and dynamism
These shapes help comunicate very key character features in Nazrin’s Eiki’s and Seija’s looks. I chose them for these examples because they mostly consist of one shape.
For more complex designs, using two or three shapes is recommended, though only one shape being used doesn’t mean a character is less complex, it simply highlights their main characteristics that much better. Nue here for example is overwhelmingly triangles with a few small circles to convey her largely mysterious but otherwise laid back and fun loving personality.
I noticed that most Touhou characters actually have triangles in their design, I’m assuming solely because most of them are super-powered youkai.
When it comes to colors, ZUN is known to use very saturated colors, however that’s only a fraction of what makes Touhou designs special.
The most commonly used color palettes in art in general are
Complementary palettes - Using two colors on the opposite side of the color wheel
Analogous palettes - Using 3 or more colors that stand close to each other, creating sort of a gradient-like palette
Triadic Palette - Using three colors that are evenly spaced on the color palette
He mostly uses either complementary or analogous color palettes, and even when he uses the latter he likes to put in one extra color that complements one that’s already there.
Triadic palettes are the rarest out of the three in art, and in Touhou as well. The only examples I could say are Nue, and Okina Satono and Mai if we consider them a single entity (which fun fact in actual myth they are).
Triadic palettes generally have a chaotic, whimsical feel to them so it’s fitting that it’s these characters that got them.
Aside from color theory, ZUN doesn’t only choose colors because they look nice. In many character’s cases they have symbolic value as well.
Eiki’s palette might seem overwhelming at first with how much colors there are. It’s usually advized to use around 3 colors on one character and yet her design contradicts that by making it twice as many. This however has a reason as these colors correspond to the six colors of Buddhism. They can mean many things depending on the context, but in her case it probably references the six realms of existence.
Shou, despite being a tiger youkai has a hair color that hardly resembles a tiger’s fur that even in sunlight is distincly orange. The reason for that is that she isn’t based on actual tigers, but the idea of a tiger conveyed by people who have never seen one in their life.
Kanako is mostly red and white, both these colors being very important in Shinto; red is the color of vitality, prosperity and keeping kegare and tsumi away, while white is the sacred color of kami. Her hair is purple, which is associated with nobility in Japan.
In ZUN’s designs, even if colors and silhouettes are important, I think what make or break them are the details. Even if those two are in place, the description of a girl with one red horn, long blonde hair, white t-shirt, blue skirt and a geta holding a red sakazuki can only get you so far.
I drew Yuugi in an intentionally crude fashion with a mouse in less than 3 minutes to illustrate that Touhou designs look distinct and recognizable no matter the art style specifically because of the easy to parce and distinct details they have.
Again the details are not only aesthetic in nature, but symbolic as well.
There’s a feng huang (also known as Chinese phoenix) on Junko’s tabard because these birds symbolize empresses or generally female rulers or feminine power.
Aunn has a heart symbol on her shirt not only because of the western connotations of the heart shape being cute and symbolizing affection, but because it’s the same shape as an inome. Inome, also known as boar eyes are built into shrines, and even weapons because this symbol is thought to carry with it the fierceness of a boar and thus would keep malicious entities away. This duality in the nature of the heart shape encapsulates Aunn’s identity as a komainu perfectly.
They of course don’t have to be lore inspired all the time. Satori and Koishi have little to do with actual satori youkai despite that part of their identity being important in their characters. They were mostly inspired by the painting The Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo.
More interesting details are how their designs have the opposite color palette or that both of them have one eye closed even if it’s a fact that’s only pointed out in Koishi’s case.
Thematic quirks like that just make designs interesting and memorable.
What I noticed is that ZUN prefers to put a twist on his characters, even if they would stand out without said twist. They are pretty much never just some guy or “an average [youkai/kami etc]”.
Even though lore is not always mentioned, the knowledge that Keine for example is a hakutaku, just makes her that much richer as a character. I feel that ZUN’s characters too only are half original and in all honestly I see nothing wrong with that. It’s a common anxiety to have that your character is not original enough, but while he prefers to make his characters quirky, don’t feel pressured to make everyone 100% original.
Touhou games were heavily inspired by Kiki Kaikai, along with Reimu who originally was barely different from that game’s protagonist. Later of course as he made more games and developed her further, Touhou started getting its own identity, but my point is that wearing your inspiration on your sleeve is nothing to be ashamed of.
Bottom line is, just have fun! Don’t stress much about it, be open and receptive of the unconventional and things will fall into place by themselves!
