Hello there internet, My name is Ando and this is weekly Art Tips!
Let’s talk character design.
Deviantart has always had a large collection of OCs, from ask pages, to fan characters,
to comics, there has always been a thriving community of artists who make original characters.
But let’s be honest, nobody makes a perfect oc the first time around and there are plenty
of things that can ruin an otherwise great design.
So let’s go ahead and look at 5 things that can Kill an OC (in no particular order.)
Unnecessary information.
Sometimes when you’re writing your character bio it’s easy to go a little overboard.
You really want to flesh-out your character and give as much information as possible,
or maybe it’s the first time you’ve written about your character, so you want to finally
get it all out on paper, or uh, computer screen to be precise.
That’s great, it’s never a bad thing to understand your character thoroughly, but
before you hit submit, go ahead and take that full text and save it to your documents.
Now start over and get rid of all those unnecessary details.
The fact that your character likes french fries alright and once went to Wisconsin,
unless integral to the character or their story, is really way too much information.
Keep it for your private notes on the character.
Other unnecessary info might include, exact weight, exact height, anything that the audience
can clearly see from the character ref sheet (IE.
They have 3 eyes), and bloodtype.
The last one is kind of a fad that from what I can tell comes from blood type personality
theory, which is popular in Japanese media.
I personally find it odd to include that in a bio, unless you are banking on your audience
knowing that Type O means you are self centered.
Without that knowledge it seems more like you’re setting up a blood donor registration
for your oc.
When it comes to writing your bio, try to keep everything relevant and engaging for
the reader and try not to overwhelm them with information.
Really the only reason I can see for not editing out irrelevant info is if you are participating
in something where another person will be using your ref sheet, like in an OC tournament.
Wait do people still do those?
Did I just horribly date myself?
Wait do people even still make oc’s?!
*clears throat* O~K, next is adding too much visually.
I know I went over this in my simplicity video, but I want to stress it again, adding too
much can kill a character design if done poorly.
When you have too much going on, whether it’s with colors or accessories, it will end up
distracting your audience.
Sometimes the most memorable designs are the simplest.
For example, can you remember what the Michael Bay Transformers look like?
Could you draw them off of the top of your head?
What about the 80’s Cartoon versions?
The cartoon, while much more cheaply animated has more geometric designs and you can understand
where everything is, while the Michael Bay versions are highly rendered and realistic,
but have too many details for you to really even focus on at first glance.
And this isn’t a personal opinion about the movies vs the cartoon by the way, it’s
simply a commentary on character design.
The cartoon was made for children, children who needed to know who was who and what was
happening.
It makes sense for those Transformers to be simple in design as well as able to transfer
over to a toy model, because that was the purpose of the show, to sell transforming
robot semis.
The Newer iteration, while toys do exist, was made to satisfy an adult audience, hence
the sports cars.
It uses realistic cg animation to match the live action setting and it’s massive amounts
of clutter and busy character designs are purposeful, as the audience is meant to be
disoriented during action segments.
But at the end of the day, the cartoon still sticks out as a much more simple and memorable
design.
Distracting color use.
I don’t think I’ll be blowing anyone’s mind here by pointing out that colors and
color theory are incredibly hard to master.
At least I hope I’m not blowing anyone’s mind by saying that.
Maybe if you’re still a beginner it might seem like coloring is easy.
Just pick some crayons and stay in the lines is as basic as it gets, but a truly exceptional
understanding takes years to grasp.
Some have more of a natural grasp on colors than others, but even with that extra edge,
studying color and color theory is a fantastic way to make your OCs stand out from the crowd.
But before you go too overboard with catching people’s eyes, make sure that they are drawn
to the correct place.
Character design is much like a mini composition, all your color choices should lead the eye
back to the focal point.
Most of the time the focal point of a character is the face, there are exceptions to this
however.
When picking colors for your OC, try to limit your pallet to less than 10 base colors.
I tend to stick to about 7 or 8 myself.
If you feel you must go over that number, then go ahead, just try to limit your pallet
as much as you can.
Stay away from picking overly eye catching colors for unimportant things, like lime-green
shirt cuffs or a bright red tail when they don’t match anything else in the character.
If you find yourself using a specific color only once in your design, try incorporating
it again in another area to make it more cohesive.
Also keep in mind that specific color trends can come in and out of fashion, possibly horribly
dating your character once tastes shift again.
I would recommend finding color palettes from images you like and trying them out for yourself,
or try zooming way out on your image and see where your eye goes to first.
If it goes off to one spot and sticks there, try adjusting the saturation or hue.
Play around with lots of options and pick what you feel works best.
Poor Layout.
Poor layout in my opinion can really put a damper on a ref sheet.
I should know, I used the worst layouts on my own ref sheets for years.
So let’s tear them apart shall we?
OOH this hurts me.
O~K, So first off Comic sans.
Second, there is far too much text.
In a ref sheet, keep your bio in the description.
Text tends to draw the eye, but too much text can dissuade a viewer from actually bothering
to read it, so essentially you have distracted your audience from your art causing them to
just stare blankly at a block of homework.
Try to limit any text to the absolute essentials; Their name, brief notes about anything essential
in understanding your character ( like they’re undead or they’re 2 inches tall) Also you
can add a few labels if you have anything that isn’t easily understandable about the
design (say you have a character that can change their shape so you would need to label
their different forms).
Put anything else in the description.
When it comes to backgrounds, try not to have them compete against your oc for the viewer’s
attention.
Try to keep them streamlined and relatively unnoticeable, though I have seen great backgrounds
that have a lot going on and don’t distract from the oc.
I recommend looking at other well mad ref sheets and studying how they layout their
page.
Just keep everything easily readable and direct your viewer’s eyes exactly where you want
them to be.
And the final thing that can kill an oc is Posing.
Yes posing.
One of the quickest ways to get a feel for a character is body language.
The way a person carries themselves can reveal a lot about them.
For example look a Eeyore, verses... uuuh, Him.
These two characters cannot possibly be farther from each other in personality and looks,
but even if you had never seen either of their shows before you could probably still tell
that they have very little in common.
Eeyore is an eternal pessimists, his eyelids are low, his head is low to the ground and
so are his ears.
He’s practically dragging himself on the floor.
To top it off, when he stands his rear is the highest part of his body and this draws
the viewer's eyes into a nosedive straight to the floor.
He is the visual embodiment of a donkey debbie downer.
His pose tells a lot about who he is as a character.
Now let’s look at Him.
Him is a trainwreck of a character in the best sense.
He’s twisted, confusing and impossible to look away from.
His pose also tells a great deal about his character.
His posture itself, while also very hunched is clearly not from low spirits, rather it’s
more like he is constantly sneaking around in an exaggerated and obvious manner, he is
all legs, and his feet are little spikes, giving him a weightless look.
If you see him in motion, he flaunts and and points his legs dramatically.
His face juts outward and he often has a large dastardly grin on his face, which is accentuated
by his widows peak framing his slanted eyes.
He is always up to something and it shows.
Now let’s say you saw a straight on front and back turnaround of these characters with
no dramatic posing at all.
It tells you so much less about them.
I’ve seen a mountain of great ocs that lose me at first glance because they lack character
in the image.
The bio may be the most impeccably written piece of literature, but if the image fails
to capture attention or gives the audience a false assumption about your character, this
can kill your oc.
Instead of using a simple pose, like hands at the side or sitting, try dynamic posing
that tells you something about the character before even needing to look at the bio.
Alright I could keep going on about character design forever, but for now that’s all I’ll
say about this topic and-
AHHHHHH!
I didn’t forget them.
If you’re even bothering to watch videos on improving your ocs it should kind of go
without saying.
But if you really want my big controversial opinion on using those things, then here it is:
Don’t.