Hello, my name is Roxsana and today I will explain part of my process for designing characters.

 

I will be designing an anthropomorphic character inspired by my cat, Jump.

 

I am sure that these tips will help you regardless of the tool you use, whether traditional or digital.

 

 

Before designing

Before starting to draw it is always necessary to have defined what we want to represent.

 

For example:

 

I want to design my character in a futuristic fantasy world, where cats have been ruling the planet for a long time. Something characteristic of them is that they always carry a magic stone with them, this is the source of their power as rulers, and it allows them to use the most powerful weapons in this world, the mechas. Right now, I will focus on the cat, in the future there will be more content about this world.

 

Regarding the personality of the character, taking my kitten as a reference, he is affectionate, gluttonous and playful, he loves to get my attention and sleep, he is obedient, clean and spoiled, and he is demanding with food, when he doesn't want me to touch him He bites and when he sees me exercising he starts playing with me. In short, he is a very good alarm clock and he likes to be treated like a king, like every cat.

 

Maybe all this personality description is common, it is not shown in a single image or it is not the final personality of the character but it is a good starting point, the best way to create a character full of life is to start from the reality and give it our own touch, our interpretation.

Psychology of form

There is something called psychology or shape language, which can be summarized as how our brain relates different features to different simple geometric figures.

 

For example

 

      + Circles are related to softness, warmth and pleasant things

      + Squares are related to defense, immovable things, resistance and strength.

    + Triangles are related to aggressive and daring things.

Iterations

Now that we have defined who our character is and where he is, we can begin to design him.

 

We start by doing iterations (a process of trial and error, where we give light to all our ideas and polish and discard them until we reach a final design); The first thing is to define the type of body it will have, we can do it with lines or with spots, this time I make several spots with different shapes, to have several body options for the character.

 

 

I want to highlight his gluttonous and affectionate side, so I choose the most tender and plump shape.

Color psychology

It is when our brain relates the stimuli we perceive from the outside with colors.

 

For example:

     + We associate cold, sadness with the color blue.

        + Summer and the sun with the colors yellow, green and orange.

  + Something more aggressive with the color red.

     + We relate sweet things to the color pink.

And so on an infinite number of other things.

Clothes

Once the anatomy or body of the character is defined, we can start thinking about what clothes we want them to wear, what type of clothing fits them well and represents their personality.

 

We can do it in color or black and white, at this point we can play to get to know him or express his personality.

 

We can take our time and experiment and draw all our ideas, sometimes we may not be very creative or we may not feel like doing it, so we can take a break and continue when we are better, or we can continue drawing little by little. creativity comes.

 

 

Variations

When we finally get something we like, something that represents our character and that fits the established theme, we can move forward with the final details.

 

From the clothes or clothes that we liked we can make some small variations, some small changes in the design that you want to try.

 

If you can't think of any changes that suit him, then we can continue with color variations, to choose the color that best represents our character.

 

 

Final Design

Once the design is complete, we can make an illustration to better represent the character, a character sheet if we want to model or animate it or use it for a personal project; On the character sheet we can include different poses that show more of their personality, some variant of outfit, different expressions, everything that we want to show about the character and help us with our project.

 

 

Well, this is the end, I hope I have been of help to you with your character designs, if you have any questions do not hesitate to comment.