Who your character is influences how he looks, functions and enriches your story.   Assuming you already have his personality developed on paper or in your head, you’re ready to begin the visual design.  But what is the best approach to take?  Here are some tips from veteran character designers to help inspire those of you who already know the basics, but who still want to make their characters really sing. 

For Emmy Award winning television designer, Scott Geralds, seeing bad design is like “knowing you put your heart and soul into sending your kid to college and he just partied and blew his tuition.”  Geralds should know – he’s been designing characters for twenty-three years.  His credits include a long stint at Hanna-Barbera, where he was put in charge of the entire design department at the tender age of twenty-seven, DIC, Marvel and Warner Brothers. 

Scott’s mentor, classic Hanna-Barbera designer Iwo Takamoto, taught Scott that no matter what he designed, even if it’s something as simple as a chair or a spoon, to make sure it was appealing.  This, he says, became his mantra.  “For awhile, there was a lot of design work [in television] going on where ugly was better.”   Scott agrees that that style had an appeal for a certain audience, but for many designers it was frustrating because people who didn’t know how to draw used it as a crutch.  What he means by appealing is: pleasing to the eye.  This makes an audience naturally gravitate toward characters they can relate to.  “It’s not just the cute factor,” Scott explained. “Because too cute would make your stomach turn.  But from a commercial perspective – and most television work falls under that umbrella – it is something a budding designer might seriously want to consider”.     

Characters that also stand out from each other grab an audience.  Show your designs to people who have no idea what your story is about and ask them to tell you what kind of personalities they think your characters have, based on what they see at first glance.

But how do you telegraph each character’s distinct look and nature?  If your models lack that appeal, go back to the character’s basic shapes.  Even a stripped down version of triangles, circles and so on, should reflect your character’s personality.  It also gives you the opportunity to step back and assess any part that still needs reworking before you are ready to move on to detailed features. 

Many beginning designers feel uncomfortable developing their character’s look from different angles, so they tend to cheat.  But the sooner you push yourself to master the ‘the turn around,’ the more accomplished your designs will be. You don’t have to recreate your creation’s features in every turn with technical exactness.  Variety in the shapes of their features punches up the different views and the overall design.  Thirty- year veteran, Disney, Marvel and Warner Brothers storyboard artist and designer, Debra Pugh, has always followed this rule.  “Another thing I learned about perspective in animation is to keep your horizon line low.  You don’t need to use fancy upshots.  It keeps the perspective simple and engages the audience so that they’re part of the picture.” 

If you really want to get inside a character’s head, speak out loud in his voice. Then visually emphasize that voice in your design, attitude and poses, advises Dave Woodman, a designer who specializes in feature and TV animation caricatures.    “I always listen to voices when designing a character.  It’s a tremendous help to the visuals – even right down to the way the mouth moves.” 

One of Dave’s favorite features to work on was a film called Cats Don’t Dance.  It remains his favorite because of the challenges he faced designing models based on real celebrities from the 1930s.  These characters had to be both recognizable and appeal to a modern audience.  Dave studied old films for hours to familiarize himself with the way they moved and spoke, making sure even little details like eye color were accurate. “It’s one step further to design a character and be confined to a likeness because you really have to capture him or her at first glance.”  If you’d like to see Dave’s thinking process in action for Cats Don’t Dance, from roughs to cleanup to final models, please visit: http://www.davewoodmanart.com/cdd.html?voltar=3
 
Dave pointed out that even on a show he adores, like The Simpsons, where character design is subject to the series’ over-all style, voices help the audience to identify a famous character.  “Would you know Keifer Sutherland appeared this season if he’d kept his mouth shut?” Dave asks.

Once you have established a visual style for your story, be consistent with it.  Characters who look like they all come from the same world add a sense of reality to it, no matter how out-there your storyline may be. 

Scott Geralds has just begun work on Secret Saturday, a series for Cartoon Network.  The style for this series contains elements that hark back to retro 1960s action cartoons like Johnny Quest, in keeping with its era-specific content – but with a unique modern twist to the overall look, to engage today’s viewer.   Scott’s goal was to capture the essence and excitement consistent with adventure shows of that time, but to not do it verbatim. 

A good character designer lines their characters up to determine how they relate both visually, and personality-wise.   It's a rare story that features just one character – most are about relationships.  Sometimes a main character can be changed for the better, based on something cool you came up with for a supporting cast member.  Size difference is also more exciting and helps to separate one character from another.

A fantasy creature, like an alien or monster, is limited only by your imagination – but giving it a working anatomy goes a long way toward making it believable.  You can always draw upon animal, vegetables or mineral elements from our reality to enhance the design.  Familiar touches can help the audience accept it as real on an unconscious level.   Treat this kind of character as if he were an authentic subject.  How do his environment and history influence his appearance?  It is easy to rely on the crutch of the visually bizarre to hook an audience, but ask yourself:  If this character was in a dark room and you couldn’t see him, would you still want to find out who he is and what he has to say?

Almost the same goes for animals.  When developing animal characters it is better to start with a realistic design.  Once you get the feel of the animal’s anatomy you can simplify, broaden and stylize that image as you continue to anthropomorphize the character.

Try to keep in mind the medium in which your characters will be viewed.  Feature film characters are often more detailed because more acting and movement is required for the big screen.  In television and on the web, the movement is limited, and sometimes done away with all together.   Almost anything goes in a video game.

A bazillion costume details may also be tempting, but nasty little things like busy clothes and accessories, and an endless palette of colors are difficult to animate.  Dave Woodman, who also designed Cruella Deville’s costumes for Disney’s 101 Dalmatians TV series, agrees.  “The costumes were so important to define that character.  I was encouraged to be creative.” He said.  “One way I did this was to think while keeping my pencil going.  There wasn’t a lot of research available so I had to think about who she was, and what she’d pick out of her closet.” 

You can also shake things up by designing in a new style, or tackling a different kind of character than the type you normally gravitate toward.  Designing with a target audience in mind is an interesting challenge, too.  “Know your audience.  Young children tend to be attracted to rounder softer shapes as opposed to chiseled shapes.” Says Debra Pugh.  “2D or 3D, the consensus seems to be the same – develop your artistic eye because you still need a sense of aesthetics to create memorable characters.” 

“And think outside the box,” she added.  “A lot of stuff these days seems to me to be just a retread of Anime.  In this business, you will always have to reinvent yourselves.”

Finally, sometimes it is the rules you break that result in the creation of the most memorable character – and that can mean the difference between a duck who’s merely daffy, and a Daffy Duck.