i love your designs they're so cute, do you have any tips for character design 🥹🥹🥹
HI thank you very much!! im not a professional but a hobbyist and im honored that you want tips!! just take it with a grain of salt
listening to music - it will help setting the mood for what design you want to do, i did most of milgram characters by listening to their music/cover, you can listen to anything really!
pinpoint traits - like what do you want your character to have? spiky? wings? fluffy? things like that! even simple things like what color you want for the character, their personality, markings, etc
make concept designs or ask for feedback - i usually do this with my friends to see what could be improved, sometimes its hard to point out what you don't want in the design/or what you want so its good to have another pair of eyes looking over at them!
im going to use my design of yuno as an example; my traits for her was "try to make her look warm colored, make her look like a rabbit, motifs to tear drop (t2 mv, this was made before t3 mv) "
coloring is the hardest part for me generally, i just toss random colors and see which one looks good when put together with other colors and try to not make them blending to each other (i have visual issues, so i tend to make my designs have darker contrast against other colors so i can see them properly)
im not saying that theres a right way or wrong way to design (honestly the wrong way would be if you make disrespectful designs to real people/real culture/history)
you can try to run your colors/design through black and white filter to see if most colors stand out and isn't too blending with the main color enough
our beloved yun chan in black and white below! you'll see that the colors arent too blending that its hard to see (save for the light pink parts on her face and paws)
since i have aphantasia so all of these tips doesn't 100% work for me and i need to have visuals so i can at least get a grasp of what i want to make, i tend to look at references or moodboards to try to see what i would want in a design
also not the very least, you can choose between simple or complex. simple designs still have their own charm! complex is a bit harder (i used to be mainly a simple designer) so don't think that simple = bad quality, they are still meaningful!! i started these in 2023 with simple designs too
my very simple yuno design from 2023.... i still treasure her and often look back to see how much ive improved in putting motifs on her design
i hope this helps! thank you for sending an ask!