A Short Introduction

Designing a character is one of the most exciting things to do, because the fictional characters are an extension of ourselves in another dimension, they share our struggles and teach us new ways to solve our problems. Once created they can create their own worlds and make decisions, they can resonate with us and take us to their exciting journey.

Now we are going to talk about some basic devices that would help us create interesting characters. The main key is to give ourselves enough room to try out different possibilities in a way that don’t feel too hard or time consuming or boring. Because art is about having fun after all.

Now it would be easier to start creating a character, if we have a general direction to go. Usually an art director or a client would provide it for you. But this time we are commissioning ourselves to create a fun character.

For the sake of practice, I suggest we use a combination of different archetypes to create something new. It doesn’t have to be something too complicated and deep, just a fun idea.

For this article I am going to explore some possibilities to create a female space samurai.

 

Step One: Conceptualizing a face & hairstyle

Heads are the most important parts of our body, not only they contain our brains, they are also the perfect window to our personalities, you can tell a lot about a person by just seeing their faces.

For instance a strong jawline can be a sign of strength (example A), and a long chin shows masculinity (example B). Big wide open eyes usually associate with innocence and kindness (example C). And smaller eyes with closer eyelids, have a mysterious and shady vibe to them (example D). A person with a long forehead usually is considered wise and smart (example E). Thick red lips are indication of higher sex appeal (example F).

There are a lot of other examples to mention, but none of these should be used to judge other people. They are just general beliefs that come in handy when designing a fictional character, although some of them might not be the same in all cultures.

You can make use of these characteristics for both male and female characters, just remember female characters should have softer angles and edges.

 

Furthermore try to imagine a brief story for the character, what she/he may have gone through, to be this character? What kind of daily challenges she/he faces? What is her/his strong and weak spots? What she/he needs to have in order to survive? These little stories will help you create a more realistic character.

Now for our assignment, we need to understand that a space samurai is one of the toughest people out there. She must be very athletic and highly skilled at using her weapon. Confidence, patience, and dedication are the most important characteristics we need to show in her face. So a strong jawline can give an impression of her strength, a high forehead to show her wisdom, and her big eyes can show honesty and loyalty. And of course she is Asian.

I am using the symmetrical ruler in clip studio paint to design the face, it helps us to focus on exploring different variations to come up with something that works.

 

Here I start with sketching a few heads with slightly different head shapes, then I select my favorite and add a few more small variations to it until I find something I like.

Now I choose my favorite one and add a scar, war paint and some strands of hair here and there. They help to add a little story to our character. I prefer a simple hairstyle for her, but you can go ahead and try more variations.

If you feel comfortable using a reference at this point, don’t hesitate to do it, references help to keep your drawings fresh.

 

Step two: Brainstorming & Researching Outfit Options

Now it’s time to put our fashion instinct to work. First it’s best to gather as many reference images as we need to understand how they look like, but we are not going to copy anything, we are just going to extract some elements we like about each subject matter and put them together, and see what happens.

These are some sketches I have come up with. I am still using the symmetrical ruler to specifically focus on the design. As you can see, I have drawn each piece of clothing separately. It’s because we are going to do a fun experiment with them.

Next we will do some mixing and matching, for me this is an incredibly fun way to come up with unexpected results. We can always fine tune them and make them match each other, if they already don’t. So don’t keep from experiment your craziest combinations, you might end up liking them.

Again, I choose my favorite design and move on to the next step.

Step Three: Choosing the Right Color Scheme

Now that we have our head and our clothing, we can put them together and add the arms, something that goes with the overall design. Then we go ahead and color it.

Choosing a harmonious color scheme can be tough sometimes, right? Well, it can be easy actually.

Before the digital age, artists used to mix paints to harmonize colors of their paintings, and with practice they could create great color schemes which inspire us to this day. But a digital software offers too many options, and choosing the right color might seem daunting.

I am going to use the same concept of mixing the colors, the digital way! It helps a lot to know a bit about color theory, but we are trying to keep it fun and intuitive here.

To follow along, add five solid squares, or ovals (or whatever you prefer) to your canvas. Like the picture below.

 

 

Then go to the Layer menu and choose New Correction Layer, and add a Gradient Map.

Now choose your desired colors, and slide them back and forth until you like what you see. The great thing about this tool is that you can see the results instantly which allows you to try out different colors as quickly as possible. If you like a color scheme. Hit OK and duplicate the gradient map layer, hide the other one, and experiment more with it.

Now I lay a basic shadow layer to give my design more definition. I will put the color layer beneath it.

Now we can use the eye dropper tool to sample from our favorite color scheme and use them to color our character. Try to remember, it’s best to scatter around each color to create more visual interest and harmony in the design.

Then I add some highlights, and finally a color balance layer to intensify the color contrast a little bit. Now that we have completed our design, let’s go to the next step.

Step Four: Creating Model Sheets

Whether you are creating your character for 2D or 3D animation, or a graphic novel. You need to create a model sheet. A model sheet is basically a drawing of your character from three main angles. Front, back and profile view (You can do more angles if you want).

At this point you can just complete your design by drawing the back and the profile view of your character, based on the front design, you have created earlier.

 

 

Now this part might be technical and might look difficult, but all you need to do is to look out for the proportions and imagine the rest of the design. Now let’s go to the real fun part.

Step Five: Presenting the character with an action pose

Now that you know how your character looks like from all sides. You can go a step further and present it with a pose. Because why not? It will give a better idea how she might look like in a graphic novel or a movie.

When it comes to posing a character, possibilities are endless. But you can narrow it down with asking the right questions. Imagine how your character would pose usually, is she/he a strong person, or a weak one? Proud or humiliated? Brave or a coward? Answering such questions will give you an idea about how your character behaves in any situation.

 

I used a very simple pose to illustrate that my character is a proud warrior, and she means business. How she looks at the camera and her strong stance expresses that idea right away.

I hope that my way of creating characters, can inspire you to come up with your own ways and designs.

Thank you for reading.

About the author:

Shahab Serwaty is an Iranian director & animator. He has been working on several animated films along with board games and music videos. You can check out his work in the links below.

 

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