my artttt

So many people have asked me for character design tips over the past couple of years. Here’s a whole list of rules I keep in mind with my own character designs.

In no specific order:

Simple is good. Streamline your design to its essence. The more shit you add on your character the more you make it about what they are wearing, and not who they are.

Popular ideas of beauty are limiting. There are only so many ways to make a character conventionally beautiful before you start noticing they all have the same face (i.e. “Six Faces Syndrome”). What most people consider “ugly” or undesirable is actually features that make your character unqiue. Who would you likely remember more: A perfect-faced model or that model’s twin with buckteeth?

Understand typical archetype designs and visual stereotypes to use them effectively. What are characteristics found in a “hero” character? In a “villain” character? In a “child” character? What can you do to mix them around, or play it straight?

Don’t draw the lines of the character, rather: draw the character in the lines. In other words: if someone told you to draw a horse, don’t just draw a plain old horse—draw the personality in the horse. A Royal Noble Horse has a much different character from an Old Sickly Stubborn Horse, for example. There’s a difference between Hark! A Vagrant!’s Fat Pony and Tangled’s Maximus, for another example.

Make your characters relatable. Making a character as wildly unique as possible (a pink-purple-blue haired goth wearing nothing but Hot Topic gear, for instance) actually is one of the most alienating thing you can do for your audience. It’s trying too hard to make your character a special snowflake. Limit this extreme to very specific characters and roles, be calculating and precise about going crazy. It will be more effective.

In addition, find what makes a person special through the boring features. Not everyone has crazy tri-colored hair, but there are a lot of people who have short brown hair. Can you draw five different characters with short brown hair and make them all unique? Try it out.

Silhouettes are important. Are you varying body mass? Are you utilizing basic shapes? We are able to recognize people and objects just from their shadow, and we do it so often we don’t even notice we do it! If all your characters have the same “shadow,” challenge yourself to mix it up more.

If you drew your characters naked and bald, could you tell them apart?

Be consistent in the ‘tone’ of your design style.

Hey all you digital artists and art enthusiasts! This is a list of free art resources/tools that might just help you out!

Programs:

Paint Tool SAI - SAI is probably the most popular tool to use for digital art (aside from stuff like Adobe Photoshop). It has a really simple interface and a lot of different features. You can download brushes for this program like water colours and patterned brushes for free from deviantart. It also has the option for layers and lineart/colouring layers! I use this for lineart mainly, but it’s good for colouring as well.

Krita - Krita is another popular tool. It’s a little like SAI, although I prefer this program for colouring (unless you have a drawing pad, I would recommend doing lineart in SAI and then colouring in Krita). It’s really simple to use and has a nice interface and a LOT of brushes and effects! This will take a moment to start up though, so give it about 2 - 3 minutes. It also has a palette option so you don’t have to go searching for colours!

MyPaint - I haven’t personally used MyPaint before, but from what I’ve seen, it has a similar interface as Sai and Krita and is updated regularly, unlike the other two (although they don’t need updating really, they’re great tools!). It has a simple interface and different brush and layer options.

Pyxel Edit - This program is for pixel art and what I use to do my pixel sprites and tilesets. It’s VERY easy to use and a great program! I highly recommend it for pixel art. Note: the free version is just as good as the premium, so don’t worry about that - and no, it does not expire.

Communities:

PaintBerri - PaintBerri is a cute little site made for digital artists in late 2015! It’s so adorable! This site also allows you to create art online with a tool similar to Sai but not as advanced (last time I had used it anyway). I highly recommend this site!

DeviantArt - Chances are you’ve heard of DeviantArt. This is a community not just for digital art but also for games, photography, traditional art, fanfiction and so forth. This has got to be one of the biggest creative community online and is a great way to share art!

Here is a pretty great place to share it too, though a warning: you should always have a claim on your work so that others can’t steal it.

Resources:

DesignDoll - WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW THIS PROGRAM HAS HELPED ME. It’s a program where you can pose a doll for reference and body proportion. IT’S AMAZING AND I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. You can also download different models and poses for this program!

DragoArt - This is a great resource for beginners or those who aren’t feeling confident. It has a bunch of easy tutorials on how to draw pretty much anything. And it’s updated almost every 10 seconds! Even if you’re confident, this is still a good resource to check out.

And that’s it! Thank you for reading this incredibly long post. Please reblog for your arty followers and feel free to add on anything I missed!

I mean this.

PERSPECTIVE TRANSFORMING…

@danisnotonfire

*snooze*