{"id":1216,"date":"2015-09-25T06:18:18","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T10:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/makingcomics.spiltink.org\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2024-08-03T01:06:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-03T05:06:37","slug":"character-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salgoodsam.com\/mc\/character-and-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Character and Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve posted about the writing side<\/a> of inventing characters<\/a>, with comics of course the visuals are just as important, and by extension,\u00a0often the world you set around them<\/a>.<\/h2>\n

\"tothbanner\"<\/a>If your comics take place in the now, then you don’t have to think as\u00a0hard about it, just pick locations around you. Be creative about it, look for good ideas always.<\/p>\n

But beyond the realm of realism, there’s a lot of comics! And for the best,\u00a0there’s a lot of design that goes into character, world and prop building for them too.<\/p>\n

Part of this is down to the style you draw in. If we’re doing more realistic, or super hero characters, then we want to think about things like hair style, age, presentation and body language. Finding ways to give them distinctive traits that let us tell people apart. Think Clark Kent’s glasses<\/a> vs Superman’s spit-curl<\/a>. As we move towards more cartoony styles, body language gets more exaggerated, and features can become much more distorted and distinctive as well. In ALL\u00a0styles, the characters silhouette and distinctive traits are what makes us recognize them fast, so it’s good to spend some real time thinking about style and visual language, nail that all down before we have to draw them hundreds of times in our comics!<\/p>\n

Great examples are best. To start here, I’ve collected some examples of Alex\u00a0Toth’s<\/a> work for animation<\/a> character design, because he was one of the best! Gave his designs a lot of vitality, personality, and had a knack for strong and distinctive looking characters.\u00a0He was great, and prolific! And a devout life long student and researcher. A role model to many modern artists including myself.<\/p>\n

And notable most of all for his clean distinctive sense of design, form and line. That looks effortless<\/a> but a lot of planning goes into it!<\/p>\n

I’m going to share with you here two big sets of Toth’s work\u00a0to show you how it was never magic. it’s work. A lot of experimentation and exploration, either for fun or in the name of ideas he was hired to give form.<\/p>\n

There is always a process of invention. On one side here, we have many examples of his PROFESSIONAL character and prop work in the form of fairly finished model sheets. And on the other side, samples from his personal sketchbooks. Looser, tentative in places, sketchy, thinking out loud, showing his general exploration of design and study of people. Things, planes here in particular. And compositional ideas. Note the many grids of comics like panelled doodles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can find even more of Toth’s mind blowing\u00a0stuff here on this amazing fan maintained web gallery<\/a>. I recommend many hours of considered browsing there. Toth is also famous for<\/a> his no holds barred notes to aspiring artists,<\/a> look those up too!<\/p>\n

[ezcol_1half]<\/p>\n

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[\/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]<\/p>\n

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Pretty amazing eh? I think the sketchbook work helps show how much thinking went into what he was doing. Considering and trying things out loose and fast, recording sights he saw for later use<\/a>, developing the ideas about shapes and patterns we see all over his professional work.<\/p>\n

[\/ezcol_1half_end]<\/p>\n

Design is one of my favorite things to do for comics.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It means thinking a lot about imaginary people and places and getting to play with speculating about what they could look like.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For comics and animation, some of the goals are very similar. And a lot of the best advice I find personally coming from people who work in animation. First in animation and comics both, you need to be able to draw<\/strong> it\u00a0<\/strong>Repeatedly<\/strong><\/span>. Whatever “it<\/span>“<\/strong> is.\u00a0So some degree of simplicity<\/strong> is very important. You don’t want to over do it.<\/p>\n

We also want all the important characters props and locations to be distinctive<\/strong>. Designed well, and for there to be an OVERALL continuity to things that live in this world you create.<\/p>\n

Unless the part calls explicitly for otherwise. Say a real human who appears in cool world<\/a>? But otherwise, it should all feel like it belongs together.<\/p>\n

That often means incorporating some kind of story wibe set of rules for how things will behave, design principles that inform why you are doing what you do, and what that will be. This eventually segways into World Building<\/a>, but for now lets stick to characters!<\/p>\n

Here’s a set of images generated for\u00a0Wander over Yonder<\/a>, created by Craig McCracken. They are part of a style guide for the show setting out the rules for it’s animators to follow.<\/p>\n

\"tumblr_mt3b15jJJI1sdjk12o8_1280\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
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\"tumblr_mt3b15jJJI1sdjk12o6_1280\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"wander-over-yander-post-1-510x284\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The universal things to think about when starting are:<\/p>\n

Personality<\/strong>, or Body Language<\/strong>? How do they stand, walk, carry themselves, express themselves? Are they restrained or exuberant? subtle or nonchalant? Casual or serious and formal?<\/p>\n

Shape<\/strong>, often called, Silhouette<\/strong>. One way to simplify the process is to think about their 2D contour, some people even play with just trying to draw rough sketches of the characters as a literal\u00a0Silhouettes to see if they can still be identified by that shape. Check out this lineup of famous cartoon silhouettes, how many can you name?<\/p>\n\n\t\t