Main themes: Toys, Animals, Circus, 90's - Use these themes to find your starting point
Surrealism. Gooseworx is a surreal artist who writes Dark and Nonsense Humor. It's okay to get weird with it if it works for the character, specifically the writing aspect
Take something you would understand to incorporate into the character. The Amazing Digital Circus is about Humans. Humans have some problems. Make it compelling somehow.
Give the character a bit of a twist. Mumbles and Wehmut's twist is that the character is stuck in two bodies. What can you do with that?
Don't be afraid to break some rules. The amazing digital circus logistics is that the universe is illogical. Anything can happen. Have fun
Hiii!! I love your page so so much! My question is: how did you come up with the human designs for the characters? What was your thought process? I’m curious because I struggle with making character designs and would like to learn more about that :D
Thanks for your art!
thank you so much!!!! AND OHOHOHO I always love getting to talk about my character designs omg!!!
this will get long so I'm putting it under a cut:
The way I see it there's two main aspects to character designs:
The aspects of their innate, genetically-caused appearance
Their means and style of self expression
With the TADC cast I had a nice and solid foundation to work with - we know decently well know who these characters are as people, what they act like and even to a degree what their interests, dreams, fears and histories are/were.
AND in my honest opinion... while their genetics are going to be innately tied to their likeness, understanding a character's personality is CRUCIAL to figuring out what they would dress like, how they'd wear their hair, what kind of background they might be from etc.
Jax is someone who's highly performative - his whole "The Funny One" bully shtick is a mask he puts on to distance himself from his own feelings and sense of humanity. He's also prone to anxiety and panic attacks, he runs and withdraws from problems rather than facing them, but also doubles down when called out on a bluff out of fear of being perceived as weak and vulnerable. He hates feeling helpless and forced out of his comfort zones and has issues about his perceived masculinity, to a point where he occasionally expresses it with sarcastically self-aggrandizing humor.
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Zooble used to be a bartender and tattoo artist and are a good and empathetic listener, despite feeling often dismissed about their own issues. They're deeply kind and have a strong sense of justice and don't fear consequences for doing what they think is right. It's easy for them to be brave and confident for other people's sake, even when emotionally they're a bit of an unsure mess who still isn't sure exactly who and what they are.
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Ragatha grew up never being good enough, never DOING good enough. She's deeply afraid of rejection, of dismissal, of being on someone's bad side, and can't handle when she does land there. She has a shallow understanding of empathy and avoids conflict to a point where it's really not healthy for her. She was raised to never be a problem, and it stunted her in knowing how to solve the problems of others. Her primary response to problems is to pretend them away with excessive optimism.
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Gangle is a very shy young woman who's idolized manga and anime as a creative means of escapism long before unwittingly forced into an isekai plot herself. She's withdrawn and has trouble controlling her moods to a point where it manifested as an active gimmick of her avatar in the circus. She holds back a lot of her snarkier opinions and is a bit of a dream chaser, despite not having the energy to pull through with them long-term.
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Pomni HATES being infantilized. She's a smart, adult woman who can think for herself and doesn't want to be coddled and will express as much where needed. To a degree she even spitefully seeks out mild trouble and thrills on purpose, but is otherwise very good at staying in her lane for as long as she's allowed, quietly observing and reading the people around her. She tries hard to see the best in people to a point that borders naivety, but she's also not afraid of bluntly calling out bullshit where she sees it.
Jax' humor reminds me a lot of the 2010s internet, specifically vine, so I headcanon that he got stuck in the circus in 2015 (we're gonna ignore what and when canon actually takes place) and I picked his clothing options inspired by douchebags I personally knew as a teen myself in 2013-2015 - the joke print shirts meanwhile are an extension of his sense of humor.
Remember also how I said he's super performative? I applied this in his apperance too!
I gave him a boyish face with a bit of scruffy, underwhelming facial hair, pretty, round eyes (partly to resemble his huge eyes in the circus), freckles and a noticable toothgap to counter the cheap edgy vibe he's ACTUALLY going for...
...with snakebites he couldn't actually afford and resorted to spontaneously DIY one day (he honestly got lucky they didn't get infected)...
... with poorly box-bleached hair (unnaturally colored hair in the mid-2010s is too easily associated with cringy youtube trends, nerdy anime weebs or the justice warrior tumblr snowflake stereotypes, so that's too cringe for him, but plain brown was also not cool enough and I just couldn't see him as completely blond or anything either)...
...with a few tattoos (that are largely very stupid in nature because he thinks he's the height of comedy and likely had a friend with a tattoo machine that didn't question his freebies-for-practice requests)
Given his whole masculinity insecurity thing, I felt like he probably grew up under parents that perpetuated a lot of toxic masculinity in a way he never managed to live up to even before the circus, where he was also tall, skinny and naturally not very athletic - so that was easy to go for in real life too.
hilariously I originally didn't design him with a hispanic background in mind at all, but the vibes just matched perfectly - so that's how THAT happened.
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Zooble, with their level-headed sass and dislike of the toy-flavored purgatory and brightly colored body they were cursed with... I felt almost obligated to make their style goth-adjacent with dark, muted colors, countering softly colored, nature-inspired tattoos. The hair was pretty easy to land on too, having grown up around people with a lot of alt and goth fashion styles myself.
The uneven eyes of their circus avatar and how often they're shown half-lidded made me decide to give them big, kinda droopy eyes and a large nose with a point to it to faintly remind of the triangular headshape they had - there has to be SOME similarity after all.
They struck me as generally darker skinned, and once someone suggested the last name "Boustani" in the comments of a post, I knew I had to make them arab and researched various arabic speaking countries to try and figure out where exactly their family would be from (Syria ended up making the most sense)
Zooble's outwardly confident, unbothered air and grounding energy made me feel like they've got to be the decently tall and burly kind of androgynous without losing the softness of their kindhearted personality, so I made them desceptively soft looking, yet clearly someone who's got weight and power. Their undefined gender also made me try to put effort into making sure their silhouette can read in either direction of masc/fem
I know many people tend to make them some form of disabled in real life, but I felt they were actually pretty great representation of someone who suddenly (upon entering the circus) finds themselves with a disability they didn't have before and having to learn how to work with and around it, grieving how they lived fine before and finding a sense of acceptance in it (even if compressed in the limited screentime TADC could offer for this) - so I feel like they would've been a lot less outwardly frustrated and avoidant about dealing with it in the circus if they'd had a form of physical disability like that in real life?
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Ragatha being a ragdoll in the circus feels unbelievably symbolic to how she grew up pre-circus. Be present without being a problem, decorative, always do as told, never resist, get dressed up and thrown around... It made me feel like her mother only got a daughter for the sake of social standing and otherwise treated her more as decoration to make do things that sound good to brag about.
^this all in all gave me the vibe that her mom would've probably made her compete in child beauty pageants as a kid and make her participate in horse riding contests, probably controlled her wardrobe and makeup for most of her life - so my human Ragatha's makeup is a bit old fashioned, as is her wardrobe.
given her history of land-owning family privilege, her interest in horses and her later career choice it kind of only made sense to me that she'd be not only white, but an old-money blond kind of white woman that, with the right wardrobe, could also give peak country girl vibes.
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Gangle's infatuation with anime and mange to me read SO hard as "isn't part of japanese culture herself but desperately wishes she was" shy white girl otaku, so white is what I made her! I really wanted to keep the red element of her avatar's ribbons, but an unnatural shade of red for her hair looked too on the nose, blond was too light and black too stark - ultimately ginger felt JUST right, and also gave me an excuse to give her adorable freckles >:D
I wanted her to feel like as much of a pushover as in the circus and, inspired by some people similar to her in personality and interests I knew IRL myself, I designed her to be unathletically skinny in a way that feels like a stiff breeze can push her over easily, but also because I felt this reminded of her ribbon limbs a bit better.
Her face is also loosely shaped like her mask in the circus was, with big, kinda droopy eyes, an unobtrusive, straight nose and a small mouth.
She's very feminine in her clothing style, but in a way that still screams "I'm insecure about my appearance but am trying to do better" with some "favorite zip up hoodie jacket for comfort" in the mix - so I tend to often think of her with dresses + jackets or mini skirts with thigh high socks in sneakers etc. Deciding that she's transfem in Aftershow later down the line after making her initial design has pretty much only solidifed this lol
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Pomni I always knew I wanted to be the most similar to her circus avatar of them all - smaller than average, with dark, straight hair and pale skin
with how she hates getting infantilized and how she craves mild thrills, I could totally see her being from a lovingly overbearing - if odd and untraditional - kind of family, as well as an appearance that can betray her age at first glance... so making her mixed white/korean just hit the sweet spot for me between the family context and her appearance
she's a woman of practicality and comfort, so I felt her hair should be long enough to tie back into a ponytail so it's out of the way, while her clothes are a rotating array of comfortable academic casual and modern, sporty, outdoors-y utility.
Besides this, I wanted her to look fairly average, pretty, but easy to overlook if you're not actively searching for her, so I didn't give her any particularly noteworthy facial features other than monolidded, dark blue eyes
I know this is technically not what this blog is about, so feel free to ignore, but I like writing a lot and I'm always interested in trying to add characters with cultures I'm unfamiliar with so I'm interested in knowing what things that are some harmful or annoying stereotypes about the Arab culture I should avoid and maybe a few extra important things to research about the culture for writing an Arabic character or inspired setting or similar.
Thank you very much!
One thing you should do while making Arab characters is research where they are supposed to be from.
Research their culture, and be sure to put a specific pin on any country in the Arabian peninsula and research more if you want it to be accurate. Not every single Arab country is a monolith sharing the same views and way of tongue. In fact, some countries have multiple Arab dialects (eg. Saudi Arabia)
+ NEVER, EVER, USE WESTERN MOVIES AS A SOURCE!! Watch Arabic films, because they give you a proper lens into the eyes of the eastern world. Drama, comedy, horror, etc. Western movies only know how to demonise or romanticise.
Avoid using stereotypes! Not all Arabic men are aggressive or always wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around their face to show their oh-so-evil terrorism, and not all women are always wearing burqas, hijabs and abayas. We only do that while going outside or expecting visitors.
And most importantly, avoid the 3 Bs: Billionaires, Bombers and Belly Dancers.
Someone on HoYoLAB asked me for character design tips for Genshin/HSR OCs. I thought it was a fantastic question, so I thought I'd share my very long answer here as well:
thanks for the interesting question! I'll try to summarise neatly for you, but here are my most important takeaways:
1) recognisable silhouette : if I create multiple characters, I should be able to identify each one by their silhouette alone. This means styling the hair, skirt, and flowy bits in a way that gives them a distinct appearance without relying on colour and detail.
2) colour "blocking": Genshin/HSR shaders being so much simpler than other anime games is a big part of why their designs are complicated and full of tiny visual details. Beautiful texturing work and using colours to break up the outfit into recognisable shapes (bodice, sleeves, shorts, tights) even when viewed from a distance is, in my opinion, a masterclass in making a game visually interesting and performant by playing to the strengths of what you've got. The simpler shader is a big part of why HoYo games are performant on low-end devices, and their art style plays to that strength instead of treating it as a flaw. Essentially, the different pieces of the outfit should break up the character into different clearly-defined solid-colour zones, and no two adjacent zones should be the same colour.
3) everyone's favourite HoYo design quirk: asymmetry! Yes, we all do sometimes find the random thigh straps and tights/pants of different length funny, but it's really good at creating visual interest and is a character design fundamental for a reason. One of the things I noticed that the amount of asymmetry in the design increases from NPC to 4* to 5* in an ascending order, and simply adding more asymmetry can make a character feel like they're of a a higher rarity, whereas the more monochromatic your design, the more they feel like an NPC.
4) Next, on to 3D animation constraints and requirements. This is something of what I specialise in, so I've done this several times before when directing concept art for character animation, but here are quick soundbites everyone can use:
a) long skirts are notoriously difficult to animate. They love to glitch out and clip into themselves, clip into the environment, look odd when climbing or running - and keep in mind, HoYo games prefer performance over fancy solutions like complicated cloth or physics simulations. Hence, you get a lot of high/low skirt design, split skirts (which serve one other purpose I'll explain below) so that the legs have maximum degree of movement and so that animations can be shared more easily across all characters (good animation pipeline decision)
b) dangling/flowy scarves/hair/jewellery to create what we call "secondary animation". Essentially, these elements move with the direction of movement, and serve two important purposes:
- a game design purpose where it gives you very clear visual feedback on which way your character is going regardless of how your camera is positioned.
- creates more visual interest and allows you to exaggerate the impact of every movement. This comment is very long already, but try looking at animations with and without secondary animation applied, and the difference is night and day. I have some interesting YouTube videos I can point you to if you're interested, but probably not here.
5) repeating patterns/motifs across the whole character - usually a simple geometric shape or curlicue. I picked two shape elements that I used everywhere in this design. Hint: one of them also appears everywhere in Wanderer's character design and in a lot of Sumeru architecture, which is what I was going for given my character's background. Tell me if you can spot them! I'll reply and tell you if you got them right.
This was a long explanation and HoYoLAB's comment length limit forced me to break up my answer into multiple comments, but I hope this was helpful.
I'm not a professional character designer/concept artist in the least. I've only dabbled a little in previous gigs and directed a few character design decisions for animation, that's about it.
Thanks for the great question! I enjoyed answering it.
the only addendum to my HoYoLAB explanation is that: don't be afraid to reference HoYo's own designs! I used Jeht, Nilou, and Elysia as my main references, and picked out elements from their outfits I really liked. The goal isn't to copy, it's to "steal like an artist" : find the elements that speak to you and try to put them together in different ways until it looks right to you. Have fun!
here's the character concept art I created for reference:
Fun Character Design Fact: you can put The Character in suspenders. Do it. Do it. Put them in a button-up shirt with a tie and suspenders. Put them in a snazy coat to match. I dare you. I don't care who they are, what gender they are, what setting they're from. Suspenders will always look good, suspenders will always look hot, no I'm not projecting because I really want suspenders.
