Character design method #1: creating a design from a single idea
Character design method #1: creating a design from a single idea
Haze’s character design notes
Hello, I’m Haze! This time I’ll introduce a few relatively simple character design methods you can try. There are various approaches, so this is just my method. I’d be happy if you find it a helpful reference.
Chibi character design drafts for review
From the chibi to a 6.5 heads design draft
I’m going to show you the workflow for creating a design on a chibi character and turning it into a design with your desired proportions, like the illustration above!
As you design, you can use the steps below.
Step 1: thinking and surveying
Step 2: creating a sketch
4. Restructure what you studied
-> Consider shape and structure
5. Consider whether your sketch is consistent with your desired elements
6. Draw back and side views
I drew this up very quickly, but I’ll break down most of the process of completing a single design. The necessary flow can depend on the medium you’ll use and the details of your design, so my process may have something extra.
Now I’ll explain how to create with the process of thinking and surveying!
Step 1: choose a motif and try personifying it!
When you’re thinking you want to design a character, you generally choose a theme.
For work, I generally get design hints from the theme given, like this: “I want you to draw a main character. She should be a teenage girl. She’ll look like she fights with a sword in a fantasy world.” Sometimes I get instructions like that and find that I don't know what to draw.
I want to draw cute girl characters, but I always draw the same clothes
I want a unique design, but I don’t know what to draw.
…those are my worries. In these cases—
I try to stop and not draw carelessly based on habit.
I stop because if I keep drawing without a plan for how to craft the impression I want, I end up with vague, random things like “a design like a main character” or “some kind of cute character”, and the finished character is lackluster, or you can’t tell what kind of character they are.
When I stop, I write down what comes to mind about the image of the character I want to draw and my motif. When I write things down, I can get random thoughts out of my head and they become clear and let me review them accurately.
Somehow I think you can easily pick out the themes you’ve described there.
Please choose one of them and try out the design method I’m teaching.
The introduction got long, but at the time of writing this it’s fall, and lots of fragrant olive flowers are blooming around my neighborhood, and I find them charming somehow, so I’ll try making a character based on fragrant olive flowers. Now we’ll start thinking about character design.
^ The fragrant olive flowers I’m using as my theme
Here’s a photo of the fragrant olive flowers I’ve chosen. First I study the flowers and ask myself “What are the elements that make up fragrant olive flowers?” I make notes on the things I notice.
Sketches and notes I made while studying my motif
What kind of shape does it have? Thickness?
What kind of impression do you get from the motif as a whole?
How many colors are there?
What kind of color scheme do they make?
Considering the above, roughly put your motif’s visual details into words as well as you can.
Because I chose a plant, there aren’t as many visual details, but I can study the design from other angles by asking things like:
to include factors you don’t know at a glance. In such cases, I write down things I ask myself “Why?” about to look them up.
2. Look into the cultural background of your motif
Other than the info from studying your motif visually,
look into the elements from a cultural standpoint. To be specific, look up things like: flower language, related folklore and stories, what status and use it might have in everyday life, and the motif’s history. At this point, write down rough notes about your research without scrunitzing what you’ll take or leave.
(Though almost all the fragrant olive trees in Japan are male, and I wanted to make a girl character with my motif this time, so I ended up leaving things like that out…)
I come into contact with lots of information while researching, so I feel like my stock of miscellaneous trivia has increased, but I digress.
3. Coming up with ideas (association game)
^ Sorting the items I came up with in the association game into those I could use
Once you’ve finished surveying your motif and looking into the cultural background, you’ll have more and more ideas for your character design. That’s the process for Step 1: thinking and surveying, coming up with ideas. We’ve finally come to the start of character designing.
Why the association game?
That’s my process for extracting keywords from my motif (fragrant olive) that could become part of my design or theme.
There are pros to being able to put visuals into words and think logically on my design concept rather than rely on feelings, such as:
It gives me a range of ideas.
I examine and put into words the factors that make up my motif.
Derive ideas from factors that seem closely related to the motif.
Visualize my impressions and put them into words.
This time I tried association with what I call the box method. Explaining association methods isn’t the point of this lesson, so I’ll reluctantly leave it out, but there are various methods, so I’d like to summarize them one day…
4. Choosing elements: gather keywords and scrutinize them carefully
Now I examine the words I've extracted from the association game from the perspective of things I might be able to use in my design.
Keywords that might be a theme to unify the whole thing
Things that might determine the vibe of the character
Things that might become part of the character’s silhouette
I’ll sort them into categories like these
^ Examining the keywords from the association game
I go farther, extracting the keywords that feel instinctive after sorting them into categories. By instinctive, I mean literally those keywords that catch my eye or appeal to me, like “this might be good” or “this keyword might be close to the direction I want my design to take”. I’ve chosen five this time, but please choose at least three.
By mixing three, the need to mix and reorganize the elements that feel right for the design emerges, but this process of mixing forces you to filter them in your head as the creator in the process of choosing the things you will and won’t adopt in your design, which creates originality.
If you take your idea from one element, your design may unconsciously resemble it or turn out very common. For example, using the fragrant olive motif, if I simply used the shape of the flowers and covered the whole thing in the same shape, even if I'm not really referencing any particular design, there’s the risk it could lead to tragic troubles like plagiarism.
As well as cases of having unexpected conflict, to have the design you spent time thinking up turn out common… that would be a tragedy too.
A long time ago I consulted someone familiar with copyright law, and mixing at least three elements to avoid a design looking too much like any one thing was the answer I received, so that’s my personal policy.
The keywords I chose will become the concept and elements of the design I’m creating.
5. Find references: create a vision board
Using the keywords I just chose, I gather visuals like information and reference photos and illustrations I think are good. The result is called a vision board.
A vision board uses visuals for what you can’t explain in words. Some in the industry may add different nuance, but that’s the broad definition.
^ The vision board I made this time
I’ve blurred it for copyright reasons, but using the keywords, I pulled together broad reference images of things like:
Characters that give a similar impression
Clothes that give a similar impression or that appealed to me strongly
The trick is… choose real photos like those of actresses or clothes rather than illustration as much as possible, so that when you make your chibi illustration, you can reduce the risk of your creation accidentally resembling a particular artist’s work.
There are various places to choose reference photos from:
Taking them yourself (go for a walk, go to the store, to museums, the library, etc)
Photos in your cell phone camera tool
They’re just reference materials, so try not to use or edit pictures whose rights are unclear or those made by others as the start of your design. That leads to lots of trouble.
Great job making it this far!
Next time I’ll finally explain step 2: creating a sketch, and I think I’d like to get into the process of drawing a character design!
I’ll be happy if you read the next one as well! Thank you for reading this far.
Learn character design tricks from zero! Anyone can design
all credit to the transualtion belongs to sixclawsdragon they did a excellent job to get the transulation right all rights belong to the original owners don’t repost without crediting them first
