MAKING AN OC (my character design process)

before we get started on today's video I'd like to thank immuno for sponsoring this video you know as a mobile network full of different communities where people similar interests can connect with each other it's nice you love designing characters so it's probably not a surprise that the Arts in a season you know it was my favorite anime know you can post and comment on pictures make blogs take quizzes shorten chat rooms it's pretty much everything you need to find people like you and I kind of wish that I knew about them you know when I first got online if I'm being completely honest the answering questions about my character design process over on the arts and ocz me know not too long after this video was posted and since this is going to be an imino exclusive event be sure to click the link in the description to download the app and follow me so you don't miss out on any details about that before that can happen though we need to actually watch the video so without further ado here's my character design process and thanks again to Amino for sponsoring this video hello I feel like no seas are becoming like the thing that I'm most associated with and I've actually how I designed my characters and I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I definitely do have experience in designing characters because I have designed so many way too many honestly before I begin though I do want to say that this is my process of designing characters this isn't the way to design characters really I'm making this video because you guys are asking for it and because I know some people need a little bit of a push forward when designing characters because they don't really have a process that works for them this definitely isn't the absolute way to design a character this is just how I design characters so if you want to use this process or just use bits and pieces of this process then feel free I decided sort my process into five steps they'll hopefully help you guys understand what I do a little bit more before I actually start designing any character usually start brainstorming ideas this isn't necessarily like a step so think of it as like a preparation for this whole process because really this is just something that's in the back of my head like a couple of days before I sit design a character like whatever I feel the need to design a character or since I'm making a webcomic wonderful I need to decide a new character I usually just like have an idea in the back of my head for like two or three days and start just like building some sort of like any sort of concept for a character really before you start actually sketching any ideas or concepts for a character it's also important to kind of think about what worlds that they're going to be in and like what story they're going to be in and then the world that they're going to have in that story because those are the sort of things that can really impact the design of a character there are definitely times where a character exists for just mere aesthetics like I have a lot of characters that I have and draw in our part of a story and so it's perfectly fine if they have a design looks a little bit out there doesn't necessarily make sense because those characters are just there because I want to draw them but if you're making a character like for a story like if you're planning on making a story or kind like or whatever it's definitely a lot better to have a character whose design it's a little bit more well thought out so the first official step is taking those ideas that you brainstormed ahead of time and just sort of sketching them out on paper it's pretty rare that I get anything of value from this step but it is an important step to do because for me at least it helps get me motivated to do this thing gets me motivated to actually work on this character it starts the process and it's important to like flush out any ideas that you have and since this is a brand new character it helps you to get to know the character just a little bit more obviously there's not going to be a whole lot of personality to the character in this face but you can start to like get an idea of who this character is by drawing them in different facial expressions and like hairstyles and stuff like that this is also a fun time and probably one of the best times to play with the shapes of the characters face I'll talk about shapes a little bit more later but shapes really say a lot about a character and we're getting like the general gist of their personality down it's important to keep these streets in mind the next step is to dive into the internet and start looking for inspiration I have different ways that I look for inspiration I have them sorted between what I'm most likely to use and what I'm least likely to use absolutely 100% the thing that I use most is Pinterest because I think it's a really great way to find like a variety of images that you can use for a variety of uses really and it's a nice way to like organize pictures things like character designs or just art that inspires you our clothing our hair styles so I can definitely recommend that I also looked at other artists that I like quite often whether that's like watching sketchbook Tours what it's usually sketchbook toys but sometimes like on Instagram or whatever like just looking at artists that I look up to and seeing like what they kind of do for character designs inspire me a little bit obviously don't like to steal their characters that's really not cool but you know sometimes if they draw a character with pigtails you might think hey that could be an interesting idea to play around with a little bit that's like a very simple example but that can definitely help out a little bit this is also a reason that you should download them you know so you should definitely click that link in the description if you want to download that I'm you know I also have folders that we have saved on my laptop that have a variety of different sort of stuff I'm real articulate here pretty much what I mean is that on my laptop I have kind of what I was doing to Pinterest but just like images that I've saved on Google over the years so I have like a folder art that inspires me or just like if I see a random outfit or a random character design that I like I'll save it and like to put it in its own little folder I don't really do this one adds much because ever since I used are using Pinterest I've never really had a need for this but I do still use it every once in a while and lastly the thing that I do the least is to look at existing characters in media that I like it's kind of ties in to what I was saying before when I was saying that I prefer not to look at artists that inspire me I do tend to get inspired by the character design whenever I watch a new show but I try not to like take any inspiration from a specific character mostly because like it is an option and it is something that I've done before it's not something that I generally preferred to do especially since I don't have a lot of time anymore to watch as many shows or play as many games or whatever but it is a thing what I do every now and again so I just thought that I would include it here the next step is to look at the stuff that you were inspired by and kind of combine it with your brainstorm ideas from earlier when you're in this day is it's really important to play with the silhouette of the character because a character who has like a really strong silhouette is going to be more memorable to whoever it is that's going to be looking at your character number one I said I was going to talk about shapes later look that's what it's later this is a great place in the design process to start playing around with shapes because shapes can really like give off to a viewer what kind of character that person is without like saying a whole lot about them obviously there are a ton of different shapes out there with a ton of different meanings but I think that the three most basic shapes that you should keep in mind with character design are squares circles and triangles squares are seen as strong and stable normally and they're most commonly using characters who are fighters or even like stubborn characters or more independent characters circles are seen as a lot more soft and kind and they're using characters who are innocent or naive or a child which I guess is both of those things but you get my point triangles can give off the impression that your character is very cunning or mischievous triangles are most commonly used in villains but you can definitely use them for other characters and they're also used for characters who are a little bit more sassy and they're also pretty commonly using characters who are really motivated and that being said you can definitely take these shapes and combine them in different ways to create more like complex thought in the person's mind this isn't a proper sentence is it what I'm trying to say is that if you combine shapes it can create new meanings to the characters that you're making and make people go wow that's a neat character which i think is the goal when you're designing a character shapes can really define a character's personality but you can also get a personality through pose so while you're playing with the silhouette in the shape super care there try drawing them in like different poses because for example a character who is more shy probably going to be like more inward if that makes sense like let's say you have a character standing there someone who's more shy probably going to be like more hunched over and they're probably going to be standing with like their arms maybe like wrapped around themselves and like their legs are going to be close in and their heads don't be hanging low if you take a character who's more like outgoing and extra I guess they're probably going to be standing with their legs apart they're probably going to be sitting up straight their facial expression is going to be more excited and just stuff like that and so like a pose is really important when you're showing somebody your character for the first time something else that I want to mention really quick before I move on to the next step is to remember who your character is now at this point your character might not be very fleshed out but if you have a general idea or the backstory it's important to keep that in mind too because there are certain parts of a character design that can be influenced by the backstory that number four is more like the written side of things and it's about like finding your heritage personality personalities can be kind of hard to write because when you're making a whole new human being like they're just so many possibilities support who that human is so the way that I normally start off writing personalities is I go to like stereotypical personalities and kind of like character tropes and then build off of that so if you think of any sort of character stereotype is always going to be specific character traits that are associated with that and then you should look at those and then remove some add some new ones in that don't normally fit that and then just do a whole mix of stuff and then eventually you will have a character who isn't a stereotype obviously this is something that's going to take a little bit more time so don't get frustrated if you're having a hard time with it I've had characters I've had their design for so long but only recently got like a distinct personality and there are situations where characters can be stereotypes like if there's a more minor character in your story but it's much more excusable if they're a stereotype because minor characters aren't supposed to be like complex scary and then there are certain times where a main character can be a stereotype if that's what your story is about or if they have a specific role in the story that causes them to be a stereotype and as I said before the personality can impact a visual design which is why I think it's important to kind of build off of the personality of the character as you're designing them for example I have a character named Cass and when I was designing him I went with the stereotype of a big scary buff dude he kind of looks like that stereotypical character where he's just like Rudy all the time and it's like he will literally hurt you if you even look at him for like longer than 30 seconds he actually like is a pretty well put together person it's kind of hard to talk about this because he's a character that I want to write so I don't want to like give away too much because Cass is one of those characters where he's the way he is for a very specific reason so I can't really say too much but pretty much he looks big and scary but he's actually like a pretty like intelligent well-put-together dude so the way did this is like I made him tall and like muscularity if I'm like long kind of messy hair and like facial hair and I used a lot more like squares and stuff in his character design but then like the clothes that he's wearing he's wearing like dress pants and a vest because it can kind of show that it's like even if he looks the certain way he's not necessarily that's their atypical character the last step that I have is the color scheme now for someone who really likes colors I struggle a lot with this step because I love really like bright and vibrant and saturated colors but that being said I'll be the first one to admit that those kind of colors are really difficult to like pull off in a well-designed character there's definitely a time and place for it but I think like in general and art tip that's given a lot is to avoid those types of colors so yeah that's literally why I saved this for last what I normally do and I think what a lot of people do is you make a little thumbnail drawings of the character that you're drawing nothing fancy at all and then after that you just swatch in colors you have the drill are is an option I would recommend doing this step there because it's a lot easier to like change colors and like you can just copy and paste the thumbnail so you can play on the different color schemes a lot easier but since I'm mostly a traditional artist I usually do this traditionally and also because I like self-torture apparently and even though I save this last because well kind of suck at it it's probably also best to save this for one of your last steps like I said with shapes color can also say a lot about a personality and this can just be like the finishing touches on your characters person that way like for example if you have like an angry character you might want to use like more reds or oranges if you have a happier character you might want to use more yellows and like purple is normally associated with royalty so if you have a character royalty try and use that basically like you don't have to use these colors for these things because really you can break any of these rules if you have a reason for them but kind of just as a general rule of thumb call this have meaning keep that in mind and also keep your color scheme to be limited it's very rare that there's a character who has a bunch of different colors and can pull it off and so usually try and keep it usually around like three colors I would say obviously they don't need to be the exact same colors like you can have like a light purple and then a dark purple and like a yellow and they're like a yellow that's still yellow but kind of more orange if you know what I mean can definitely challenge yourself by having as many colors or as little colors as you want because you know your character can't tell you what to do but I would say about three colors is where you should probably strife or indicate their design maybe for some people using three colors is too little and I honestly don't stick to that a whole lot but like three or four colors is usually my goal when I'm trying to design characters and with that we are done I have a little bonus step for you it's definitely not necessary but I think it would be a good idea if you have other characters in the story to compare this character but you just designed two other characters in your story because you don't want them to have too much of a disconnect of course there can be a disconnect like if you have somebody who is a royal status and then somebody who is like just a regular person they're not going to like a look or a dress the same so of course there are exceptions but just to be sure that they will look like they're from the same world I think it's a pretty important bonus stuff I guess to compare them to your other characters so I guess after that bonus step we are now actually done before this video ends I want to really stress that the character design doesn't necessarily end here these are the steps that I use to get a character to a place where I'm happy with that and can continue drawing them the more you draw your characters the more that they're going to change there's going to naturally evolve and develop into a more finished refined and more complex character even though this is like a nice short or maybe not so short depending on how the editing process goes I think you do video this is a process that isn't really done in a day or even like two days design the character can take a very long time and so if it's taking your long time to design a character that's okay I want to say again this isn't the way to design characters and this definitely isn't a complete like start to finish process of making characters this is just something to kind of help any of you guys if you guys are struggling if you have a different character design process let me know because honestly my process is pretty much always changing and I would love to try out some new stuff and if you do kind of follow these steps to design a character let me know I would love to hear about the characters that you guys make and if this was even helpful at all as I said in the intro I am going to be doing a Q&A about any sort of questions you may still have after watching this video over on immuno so don't forget to click the link in the description to down for three because who doesn't love free stuff and then follow me because I will be keeping you updated on that over there there should be an update of the QA about a day or so after this video was coming out so stay tuned and what did we learn today hopefully had a design character that was kind of the whole point of this video if you like this video and if you found it helpful in any sort of way thanks this is my first time sort of making any sort of instructional quote-unquote type videos so I hope I did a good job give me a like if you did find it useful if you like art and character design consider subscribing because I post art videos every week occasionally there will be a video that isn't art but if you don't like I also post about my OCS quite a bit that's something you're interested in I will have my social media on screen now if you want to see more of my OCS and more of my art and there also be the links in the description there will be a video on-screen now for you to watch as well as in the iCard I've been sitting here for like a minute trying to think of a way to say goodbye so he's gonna say bye goodbye

Channel: Oliver's Antics

Views: 334,503

Rating: 4.9585938 out of 5

Keywords: art, artist, drawing, sketch, sketchbook, illustration, traditional art, digital art, oc, orignal character, character design

Id: t-k5z-cNB_c

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019