We Critique Your Character Designs (Happy Birthday, Subjectively!)

we are recording we are back we are back [Music] our we're birthday my and Nick's birthday actually but did you know that our first youtube video was actually recorded on Nick's birthday that's true that's true his 15th birthday [Music] a little subjectively Laura we messed up the recording not once but twice before oh what's our anniversary video about so guys we are back for our first year anniversary first birthday of subjectively we can't believe we made it this far we want to thank all of you guys so so much for your support it really means a lot when we see your comments and especially with this video we've got all the submissions for your character designs and hearing the way you guys talk about how we've inspired you and influenced you that feels really good so thank you guys so much for supporting our channel I bet a lot of people would say that three thousand plus subscribers is not that much but for us it feels really great yeah thank you so so much those of you who have been with us all the way from the beginning thank you guys for sticking with us through some questionable videos do you guys want another office characters the Polaroids I was honestly thinking upo characters in the rankin/bass style let's do organza gate I honestly the smuggler I think the most abstract they all we did was very Jack and Jane went for every over like skin even in a you know that's been I mean ten oh my I forgot about that one I like that was like that was like a 40 hour recording huh the greatest thing about that video is that we just do that we would just do that we would just go through every overwatch it's gonna be yeah and that's actually why we wanted to do this channel originally because that was something that Nick and I did a lot we would just go to like the the Pokedex website and we just go through every Pokemon and be like I like this one I don't like this one here's why this one's kind of underrated this one sucks um and we were like you know we might as well just record this stuff and make it into videos and wouldn't you know it people enjoyed listening to it so thank you guys again so much it means a lot and as a kind of a little thank-you we have opened up the floor for you guys to submit your artwork your character designs and for us to give you our opinions and critiques on what you guys are creating because really that is for me at least the most important thing about this channels that we're inspiring other artists to create and continue to think about their work and develop it and it's really cool to see that and actually see what you know you guys are making and we want to be able to help you with our informed opinions that was actually crazy we I put up the video last week and I figured we'd probably get like 5 or 10 different submissions but we got like so many different submissions for this video it's just amazing I I knew we had like 3000 subscribers but I didn't think we had this many invested fans and unfortunately we couldn't go through all of your characters we couldn't even go through half of all of your the characters that you submitted so we each only picked one for each of us to critique if your character wasn't picked for this video don't worry because we will be doing more videos like this now that we know that we have this any artists who are willing to submit their work for critique we definitely want to do this more we got a lot of good solutions we're trying in general to avoid for the purposes of this video fan characters in a pre-existing universe we mostly want to look at your original ideas and we also got a couple that we felt were just really solid and didn't really need critique a couple of the characters we received we just we didn't have any changes we wanted to do for them so some of them we didn't pick just because we liked them the way they were and they didn't really need any work so we each picked characters that interested us personally either in the subject or because we related to the the main themes of the characters personally you know it reminded us of stuff that we would draw or topics that we were interested in and we're gonna give some feedback now based off of your characters designs whoa this is a cool inking brush you used that actually reminds me of something my favorite things to do other than when I'm designing characters and playing video games and my friends on the floor it's playing trading card games and PC games you can get play mats you can get mouse pads and you can get sick gamer merch from Inked gaming yeah check out inked gaming you can upload your own characters if you want make a mousepad or play mat with your own characters you can do whatever you want and while you're there don't forget to use the code subjectively 10 for 10% off your entire order all right so I'll start so I picked I picked submitted to us from EJ sorry if I'm not pronouncing that correctly it's actually a creature design and it's called the horn jaw and I really appreciated that there was so many different sketches for this character we have this one that's to scale with a human we have kind of a turnaround and more of like an anatomical kind of drawing that has like the patterns and some notes about different aspects of the anatomy we have this kind of drawing that I would assume is like the male and the female and then we have this kind of morgue we have a lot of information to work with yeah I picked this mostly because I mean I really love creature design and but this specifically reminds me of something that I would have drawn when I was younger and honestly that I would still draw today especially in my sketchbook where I would have like whole idea of like an ecosystem where the thing would it exists and you know behavior and diet and you know all of these different things and I like that I like that level of immersion when designing a character to really get into thinking about if you're designing a creature what would the biology of the creature be and I think that this person thought of that when they were designing it you can tell that there's some reference with Anatomy specific animals prehistoric animals but also living animals looks like things like some mudskipper influence with the dorsal fins and then the body is kind of like more mammalian almost like a wolf there's definitely some reference to use but some of the things that I would change about this or at least that I would advise that the artists change about this is actually to use more reference so a lot of the times when you are designing a character like this and you're in kind of a community of like-minded artists who are also designing characters like this it tends to be that you end up referencing other artists work as opposed to maybe what those artists use as reference in the beginning so if you're designing a character like this that's a creature that you know you're thinking a lot about Anatomy you think a lot about science you know how this would interact in a real world setting obviously you want as much reference as possible because you want this thing to be as believable as possible so that means referencing not just photos of animals but you know skeletal structures muscular systems and not just copying them but using what you know about these different parts of an animal to kind of create something new so when I look at this and I look at the description of the person gave me you know pack animals they have you know this tusks on their chin to stab prey it seems like they're they're mostly inspired by the anatomy of a wolf these fast hunters that work together but they also have these fins and stuff so it makes me think that you know maybe there's some more you know aquatic element that you want to involve in this and so maybe not instead of just having a wolf Anatomy maybe bring in some anatomies from other animals aquatic animals and fibia s-- animals prehistoric animals too I think a really good exercise anytime you're doing this kind of a shell monster design is just experiment like it doesn't have to be the final design but maybe just take two or three animals and try to combine them figure out how to take this real-life anatomy and then change it or combine it in a way that's interesting and unique no character design exists in a vacuum and I think it's super important to think about where this this creature lives how it exists in that space and that would show through how you would design it yeah it's probably almost makes it feel like it's more from a desert or some sort of like rocky canyon environment things always make me think of water this definitely feels more like a fish fin and I mean you don't have to limit yourself to what is plausible however it does seem like that's the direction you want to go with it you know the more biologically accurate and you know zoo logically like thinking about it the way if this exists in the real world so maybe think about what kind of adaptations that would you know provide for this animal you know if they're a fast running animal would having these fins on their heads help is it just for communication but yeah just think about that a little bit more so you have a clear understanding and you know spend a little bit more time you know sketching just animals you know I know it's fun to create your own and compared to drawing something like this maybe drawing the wolf doesn't seem as exciting I get that but it's totally worth it because you'll discover things as you draw that will help influence and inform your drawings later on when you come back to design something like this you can really do whatever you want when your does any kind of fantasy creature fantasy character but it needs to be informed that's the bottom line I'm gonna recommend an artist for you to look at you can follow me on Instagram we'll throw up the actual name his name is Jamin kim and he does a lot of very anatomical fictional creatures but he also gives him a lot of personality but you'll also say that in addition to all of the crazy creatures he draws he will do you know studies of like crocodiles and jaguars and all the stuff and then he'll draw a Griffin so definitely check that out the last thing I want to say is just think a little bit more about texture I noticed here in this drawing you did kind of do like an overlay you know kind of seems like a preset texture maybe it was a brush and it gives me a little bit of idea of what this thing's texture might be again it feels more aquatic but think about texture don't omit that from a character especially if you want it to be very realistic and again that's something that you have to reference to because nothing is harder than drawing scales on on a lizard because it's not all one uniform texture you know the scales are all different shapes and sizes that I serve different purposes on the head they're spiky on the back they're platy on the arms they're very very tiny because they have to bend and stuff so these are all things to reference further and then it'll just give your creature a more concrete feeling because you know when you look at a drawing like this obviously there's a lot of thought put into you know the concept of it but the final rendering leaves a lot to be desired that's that's also not to say you have to draw every single scale you definitely do not to do that at all but just finding ways to render it or give the impression of variety and texture can go a long way with describing more information for your character I'll just end with saying that I really do like this design again it really reminds me of something that I drew when I was younger in high school and it makes me want it really makes me want to draw creatures again like this because I love getting immersed in that world building that you can kind of have through Natural History really what it feels like is kind of like this natural like field notes kind of drawing I really like that so keep this kind of stuff up be sure to keep sharing us your artwork too because I'd love to how you improve over time okay who wants to go next I was the one I wanted to talk about was bi so we went through this earlier and it's the main character in a fighting game that they're developing and that really piqued my interest because it's like a really large-scale project it's a very ambitious project undertaking the design of something you want to be a playable game is a huge undertaking and it's really cool to see the start of someone trying to do that so the character's name is Mike mo and he's a needle man he is like is a needle essentially and here's a needle guy and the fighting game is called fight phobia and it's about playing as all these different playable phobias which sounds very cool I would love to see you are that character too and I think this is a really cool start yeah definitely it's a way to make fighting games feel fresh so it's not just a bunch of people punching each other combo yeah it's a really good idea right now yeah yeah they said that the character is the ryu of the game which I'm taking the B main character so cool the thing I like taught this character right off the bat was we were looking at before we knew what the character was and that was a very interesting way to look at it because the thing that I really did like about it when I was first thing yeah was the sort of attempt at this style ization but I thought was really cool especially with the hands which are supposed to be like blades but kind of what ended up happening was needle wasn't really coming through it felt more like this in to be a shirt person when we zoomed in on the face I kind of felt like a stylized shark mouth and then like I thought that the needle on the top of their head was a dorsal fin and down towards the middle I think there's a pattern on their shirt that looks a lot like water and then obviously the great color and the blue and all that coming together just felt like a shirt you want your intention to be readable immediately so I would say the first thing we gotta focus on is like looking at a needle and what makes a needle whether you're looking at like a sewing needle a syringe or stuff like that because I think I'm starting to see some of the the things that were going for in the things I do like I like the simplification of it I like that your character isn't ripped learning a tank-top definitely far away from Street Fighter as you can get yeah which is so interesting that you're inspired by Street Fighter and it's just really cool to see that so my first thing right off the bat is we got to get needle to come across so the thing about needles are that they're thin and spindly and your character is definitely um kind of spindly but they're very flat and that just why it comes off more like a blade the first thing I look at is that character's hands which it feels like you want to be one of the focal points of the character so think of things like like a character with really long nails or maybe something like Freddy Krueger's essentially yeah like feels more like a blade than a needle heels are long and pointy and not like flat and sharp um I think maybe one way you can convey the thinness and pointing us of needles without making it so broad you could just add more joints because having this like one point for the legs but it's just one triangle of course it's gonna be wider at the top and thinner at the base which is why it looks like scissors or blades right now so if you just have more joints and thinness you could do a couple things with that one you can have more interesting poses and also because it's a fighting game that lends itself to more interesting moves and animations yeah I think part of especially since we're talking about the fear of needles I don't like needles myself I kind of have a fear of needles I think part of what's scary about them is this kind of deadly precision so I think something that might illustrate more that kind of like I can go right for the point that'll kill you in one shot so I think that's why we're saying something like fingers because it gives this impression that you can get right to the point where you need to be like he has the ability now with these fingers deadly precision I think having something like more joints could emphasize how he's able to now hone in and use his attacks to get this kind of precision as opposed to these blades which imply more of like ass laughing I like that you were looking at a needle and thinking of like what makes it even look like a needle you have some motifs in there but I think you can use those symbols in a better way so like on the forearms you have the measurement and that's a really cool design and I think you can put that in there oh I see like on there yeah yeah it's the measuring marks the fluid inside his shirt - that's the deadly thing that's the injection okay yeah you could also make that maybe just read because he has we're looking at the blue color scheme which is three colors this person provided us with a couple different color schemes and they're pretty monochromatic which is fine but if you had a pop of red or maybe a neon green that would be a little more sinister for whatever the fluid in the syringe is it could be blood it could be some kind of poison whatever you want it so that's a way to get towards needle a way to get away from shark is to I would say maybe even get rid of the hair and remove the point from the head yeah I think you need to come up with a more clear concept of what this thing's body is going to main been made up of try to come up with something a little bit clearer than just a person with needles for hands or meals for legs I I was thinking this is my first idea but something like not really necessarily a scarecrow but something more animatronic that has kind of more like like sewn together bits and pieces you know what I've been thinking of this whole time um the opening sequence route Coraline yeah yeah other mothers needle here look at that definitely look at that look you have that if you've never seen Coraline before definitely look at Coraline because there's a lot of needles not syringe needles which i think is more what you're going for but sewing needles definitely look at that I think I think it is really cool overall I think a really interesting idea I think that the thing you have to think about is do you want this to be a human or not like I think that somebody needed moves there now cuz if this is your base character you have to build the whole roster of characters around this idea so that's just something to think about it like if you if you really do like the way they have these scissor legs and that's how you want them to in the game like go for it like you just have to fully commit to that does that be like unlike anything we've seen in a fighter knee before maybe they're not humans maybe they're creatures maybe them were inanimate maybe they're more in electronics like Jack was saying that's something have to sort of figure out it's kind of like stuck between two things it kind of felt like there was this Neil going on and you weren't sure if you wanted them to just be a human because they have the hair and the face just think about if you want that or if you can eat that I would say even look at some UPA just in terms of craft I think the style you have the flatness is very interesting it's also fresh for a fighting game yeah and yeah I think for a character that's the main character that's super pointy I think that graphic art style could be really cool very fresh and also I think there's a lot of potential for creepiness with old illustrations yes so if you have this phobia based fighting game maybe that could be something you could draw from yeah I think that's what drew us all to this character initially was how like well the silhouettes makes him stand out I think it's it's a very dramatic posing I think that against you know this green square in the background black it's very graphic stands out a lot I don't want you to lose that and if you look at a game like Skullgirls that's kind of what sets it apart makes it you know iconic within the fighting game genre it's got the 2d animation and it's set in this kind of a 20s style like Warren 20s film setting and they kind of design their characters around that theme so yeah think about that kind of stuff at last thing I would say is I think about what medium you want the game to be in because you want the concept art to inform the style and the style to inform the concept art and so like think if you want it to be a pixel art or if you want it to be digitally to be animated or if you're even 3d animated the character is going to feel dressed be different in those three mediums so that's something to consider at the time but like keep going with your game totally sending updates that'd be so cool and Link the the fight phobias I mean you said there was like a hashtag or something because um I want to keep following that because it's really cool and yeah good luck with your game I hope you figure stuff out yeah great job looks great okay so I'm gonna talk about this submission we got from arsenic we don't have your name I hope that's okay it's an unnamed character that appears to be the shadowy figure in a crow where Raven costume it seems to be kind of fantasy inspired almost a little tribal and it's pretty cute honestly kind of walking the line between cute and dangerous and mysterious I could see it really easily in like a mobile game or an indie game or something like that banner saga something very special a main problem I see with this is that the silhouette it's not super interesting I think there's a lot of potential having this giant bird head to be more like a headdress and kind of be a tribal and maybe give information about the characters background there's definitely a lot of potential with adornments and here to be very intentional with the markings on it and the shapes that are going to define this you can kind of create this whole culture if you decide on these motifs and symbols that are going to be consistent not just within this character but in the characters hometown or backstory and you can definitely incorporate that more in their clothing as well right now it seems pretty simple you have some triangles which is fine but you can tell a story in the apparel of your character you can have these recurring motifs that belong in a world that you've created and I would also exaggerate certain features more going back to the silhouette also in the posing with wings and a cape there's a lot of potential for interesting posing you can say maybe can this character fly can they fly what are their combat abilities if that's for all of them yeah we don't have a lot of information so I'm going over just what I get visually and ideally when you're designing a character like this you want to be able to tell the viewer even without a description as much information and as you possibly can that's the goal when you're designing a character I've been looking at this I just remembered that in the description it said there is a face under there it's chatters yeah I think that's my biggest I didn't realize I remember that right it's important that you can look at something and understand it quickly I think all of us look at this and assume that the headdress or what is the headdress was the head and that was like some sort of bird character we don't really have any information about what's underneath that and if that's something you want with the character if you want the identity of the character to stay ambiguous that's fine too but maybe just try to clear it up maybe like two dot eyes down here and that way you would look at first oh it's got a bird and then you realize oh wait are those two eyes underneath there and then you're like oh that's something underneath maybe it is it maybe it isn't and then that kind of gives that convention of ambiguity without being too confusing that we can't really understand what's going on depending on what your intention is with this character I would say including you know different poses where the arms are spread out I'm not sure how much of this is clothing I'm not sure how much of it is supposed to be part of the the actual characters Anatomy I don't know if those are supposed to be wings or big sleeves and if that's supposed to kind of dance a line between being one or the other that's fine but it still needs to be clear you know that's that's gonna be important in an audience understanding what it is that they're they're looking at here because it sets the tone for the rest of the world you know is this a kind of a world where there are bird people walking around or is this a kind of a world where people where bird heads on their heads and then you know outfits kind of make them look like birds so you know that's that's all plays into it and it depends on what your goals is the way the head looks right now I'm inclined to leave that the hood has a personality and that it talks yeah and you can see that the sassy companion yeah you are mysterious here oh yeah I think what makes me think that the most is that the eye in particular is very soulful motion and that that fake eye if it is fake that's also where the most contrast in the picture is yeah especially right at that beep was that that's stark white it draws you right to that I you know that could be another thing to think about too if you don't want that to be what we're reading from the hood then maybe close that eye or make it a less saturated blue so we get the impression that it's either taxidermied or you know carving or a part of a headdress or something like that but I have to say though I do really enjoy this character I would say even in Cork maybe that's another way you can distinguish that face without it being too clear what exactly is underneath the hood is maybe adding another color I do kind of like how monochromatic it is but if it helps distinguish something maybe that's something you can use to separate it without having to add too many other features maybe just adding another color yeah experiment I think that the line between um ambiguity and confusion is kind of being straddled with this piece and I think that's sort of what's dumping everyone because it's well drawn and it's just kind of like things are very dark and mysterious but even if that is your character's personality maybe necessarily the art doesn't have to be exactly like that you can't really tell what's going on with the arms or even really what's going on with the legs so I think you just have to think well we want to draw your audience's eye and I agree with Claire I think that maybe just making the pose a little bit more clear because it kind it's it's very interesting in the back half of the piece but the front is kind of a straight line for a long part of it even just something simple like extending a knee out or having another arm out and up and have any more negative space I think the thing is there's really not much negative space except between the legs the beak um - so yeah I think it's a cool piece - I think it just there's a lot of confusion yeah I think it's cool I think there's a lot of potential here that's like a general rule of thumb too because this is obviously concept art this isn't you know a finished piece so when you're doing concept art there's no part of it should be mysterious the point of concept art is to explain without any question everything about this character fried there an animator to look at or a writer to look at or you know a level designer to look at and say I understand every part of this character so if that is your intention with your character and you're not painting a whole sequence you know whole scene where maybe it's supposed to be hidden you can't really tell what's going on with it someone should be able to look it doesn't be able to understand everything that's going on with that it can be mysterious and the theme it can't be mysterious in execution right but again I really like the idea and I like a lot about those I like the purple shadow yeah that's nice who's next no you're right so the character that I picked is from Donovan the character that I picked her name is Vee and one of the things that really drew me to her immediately as I like the style I can't appreciate a simple cutesy straightforward cartoony style she reminds me of 90s anime a little bit it's really cute yeah I just I can see that the thing that drew me to her design the most was actually having like a context and like knowing her story I think this character has so much potential to share her really interesting narrative so her background is that she's a hero with storm-related powers and she gets her powers from her bracelets and she also is a very like excited person who trains younger heroes in her gym with the design the way it is now after learning about those concepts I can see it but I wouldn't get it necessarily from looking at it immediately and I think that's what's so great about where you are now because it's a really good place to start the number one thing that I want to change about this character is her bracelets her bracelets are like so important to her character and her powers but the way they look right now it's actually very hard to tell that they're they're also her bracelets um create weather effects primarily lightning and looking at the design you can't really see that there's it's just the bracelets are probably the least important visual aspect here like she has those tattoos which are just stripes you could definitely there's a lot of potential for StormTeam tattoos that might be a little more interesting and everywhere else in her design there's more contrast than the bracelets so the effect that accomplishes is the bracelets are overlooked but they're really important yeah something I think that people don't talk about nearly as much as they talk about character design is prop design and props are an excellent opportunity to add narrative to your character in a character like V here where the bracelets are so central to her story and what she does they need more emphasis as far as the colors go I like the blue and yellow I think that's it's cute I understand that it comes from like whether you can see that like lightning and rain no the biggest issue with the colors are just again the bracelets like Claire mentioned earlier the value of her skin tone and the value of the bracelets are so similar that you can't really see the bracelets so it almost looks like an extension of her skin one thing I would also do to make the character's story stand out more is give her more specific gym clothing right now I think the clothing is very like yoga mom you think about um okay Kay oh all the different characters in that main characters mom she runs a dojo and her clothing I feel is a little more specific than a tank top and sweatpants she is someone who trains other superheroes so if she has her gym maybe you could also design a logo for the gym that was information and put that on that would be really fun that's so great there's so much like opportunity here for narrative to come through I love her expression I think her personality shines through a lot with that yeah while we're still on topic of like the clothing I just because the Pokemon trailers just dropping it's kind of fresh in my mind but all of those gym leaders have these designs that are based off of like soccer players and they kind of have jerseys that have all of their like sponsors and all these different icons and logos and stuff on them I think that is a really cool look and maybe look at like sponsored athletes and kind of see what they're wearing you know there's a lot of stripes and patterns and emblems and logos yeah that reminded me a sport that has really big important props boxing right so maybe you could look into what boxers wear give her that outfit and maybe she can get like power gloves that way oh that's like gallant and loves would be cool yeah thanks for hands against the electricity going through bracelets yeah I'm like like you know a lot of like the training equipment is padded and it looks almost rubbery you know that I could go both ways rubber to insulate against the electricity oh I was just gonna say mentioning rubber I was wondering why there was so much contrast in her boots but their rubber rain boots oh thank you yeah that's pretty cute that's that's really close oh oh oh that's cool that is cute going forward when you're drawing this character um definitely push the pose because the PO she's in right now is very like defaults for some of drama character mm-hmm which I'm so guilty of I think every care Oh God yeah it's a thing like you have to draw that once you draw the cooler ones look up active poses for this active character you know you want to draw her like punching lifting weights being a great coach yeah the thing I'm always gonna say is is reference and it's hard with something like this because obviously you don't want it to look like a real human that's not the style of this world like things like foreshortening and and you know kicks and stuff that can be hard to do even if you're simplifying it and even if you're simplifying it if you don't have enough information it's gonna look weird draw a couple real humans again your characters don't have to look like that but if you have that information stored away kind of in your mind when you go in it's gonna be much easier to draw complicated poses and it's gonna give you more options to express more personality through your characters so they're not just hands on the hip default pose look for distance of the reference compared to your drawing and like sort of look for little points that you can incorporate into your more stylized piece mimic the proportion yeah I mean I think it's about getting the core of the action is like the most important thing I think like con what we're saying is that if you inform the pose based on something in real life then it's gonna make your simplified and stylized character seem even stronger but obviously this doesn't look like a real human it's like this single human like it's kind of like getting that that pose puts them in other context of our world like if they're doing something that we like understand like if they are lifting a weight or if they are running like that's something we can connect to yeah yes I think a really good artist for you to look at would be Bryan Lee O'Malley because he has a style that's very similar but he has a lot of very dynamic poses and and I think you could definitely copy some of that energy yeah I'm just gonna say one more thing I think that what you have to do is for the bracelets you have used almost entirely a black outline in your entire piece and that's the one part where you decided to go lineless especially without there being any shadow or highlight there's really no way for the bracelets to pop it really doesn't dar I cuz they're so thin and try to make it a more specific race stuff like think of look at bracelet images like in other words ya reference make it a specific bracelet and base it up a bracelet maybe you have in real life or you saw someone you know where actually like a brace like a training yeah or something very differently or like it has to be a little bit more specific and then also think that maybe you could put a pop of color on the bracelet so yeah I'll see you in December so a yellow you could put the blue in there you can put something else or you could put Chinese on it maybe that has some sort of glow and you can think about adding shadow and highlight your character too to make things stand out more all right we're ready to move on to the last one yeah all right um the one I chose was a mercury by mercury hi mercury so the reason I chose mercury I don't know I I just have a little attraction to this I think the colors are really bright and pop well I like the concept of it incorporating like astrology say I always find that fun to talk about mercury said that mercury is an alien / demon hybrid that lives in a modern-day earth um the reason her skin has no pigment is because her blood is actually made of liquid mercury which i think is actually a really cool idea I've never ever ever heard of that before I think that works really well for either an alien or a demon but I guess my first critique is that mixing both an alien and a demon I don't know I usually like to stick to one pair and just explore that for visual critiques the the outfit is a little plain I understand that this character they're 16 they probably go to high school but I think that outfit could use a little more ya personality because you did you said here the personality I'm outgoing loud selfish and relaxed um I get relaxed from this outfit I get relaxed from the pose they don't get outgoing loud or selfish from the clothing or the pose if you push either of those I think the personality will shine through much more strongly something real quick is something we noticed going through the designs we had a couple of different character sheets including this one that all had this list of likes and dislikes and I know that's kind of a convention on character sheets but we noticed a lot of things in this list that could be conveyed through visual design but weren't so if it's important to this character that they're outgoing you should show that writer that she likes pranks or yeah like sleeping or is afraid of fire like that's really cool like I don't I don't know whom fire reacts with actual liquid mercury does that because that would be really cool um if you know there's a reason behind that but yeah and certain things it's not worth trying to put into writing character design right you know you you might you be you know working on it for years and years and years if you're trying to figure out how to in one pose show that this character is afraid of fire you don't have to show all of this through one pose on drawing like if this is a character that exists in a comic like you know maybe throughout the course of the comic that will be revealed later but I think mercury as far as pose and outfit I I like the hair I like the horns with the moon and the star that part of my curious logo for the astrological well I see it's part of a the name and it looks like it has horns yeah that's so which i think is really cute character I would say you could even play that up in some way yeah you know I feel you play up the monster alien demon you know you do have I mean an alien demon can look like anything so I'm not saying there's a certain way that it should look but it also means that there are so many different possibilities and it's worth experimenting you know try a couple of different designs where you play at the star the moon the horns you know in that way you can get all these ideas out visually and you can look at them and you say this one's too crazy this one is you know not enough this one's just right and once you have all those ideas you'll be able to find that you'll come to the best possible solution because I think there is more that you can do with those horns I mean that little star and Moon going up on the top there since she's not human also I would say just experiment try different studies where she looks more beast eale she looks more demonic she looks more alien and you don't have to keep those but in that experimentation you might find bits and pieces that you want to keep in your actual design mm-hmm something also just in terms of like the stylization is that it looks like you've really squared off the face and kept things really geometric but then in pretty much the rest of the drawing it's either based off real life or just you know it's just straight up round like this hair is very bouncy and flowy and I think the combination is almost working because of the shoe are more geometric like the face but just pushing it in one style either more naturalistic or more stylized would definitely improve this characters just consistency overall but stable axed is the key feature you're trying to highlight with the seams like what oh we can see that feels like the most where you're trying to go for the half-shut eye and the hands in the pockets all that stuff I love the dress the other discussed you're tight it's like half stop because that's so real I think that the silhouette can be more interesting it is very plain it is kind of a triangle what does it achieve to work with but everything is very contained I understand same I understand what you have your hands in your pockets there isn't really a lot of interesting things to work but you could sort of try to work that in a way that has more interesting shapes to it maybe there's more negative space in between the arms maybe one arms in the pocket and one arms doing something else maybe there's another way to show relaxed pretty much the key odors what I'm trying to say is just try different poses and try different silhouettes maybe the hair is more bonus in one maybe the the hair is more asymmetrical maybe the pose is more asymmetrical yeah but just think about how you can show relaxed in a more interesting way because the pose is kind of boring um it's sort of just like oh the hands in the pockets raven like we've all do that we've all been there everyone join hands I mean I'm not gonna I've done that soon my other thing is I think that the proportion could be exactly a little bit because the thing is it's very close to being very accurate to a real human but to sort the whole Middle area it's kind of confusing me where the sweatshirt is long but also that pants are baggy like where we're seeing like at the top of their pants and it's or just gives this implication of a really long torso and really long and maybe that is intentional but it might just be something to be aware of it looks just a little wrong in the middle um I just think the tail could definitely use a little work I guess I really like how you're using like pure black for the horns of the tails like maybe separate the flatness of it like like lends itself to be more either demon or alien like his otherworldly um but I think the tail mostly could just use a little more work just because it looks like a string with a star on the end of it maybe there's more going on with the stars like there's multiple stars or floaty little bits or I don't want to give too specific yeah I think yeah I think yeah because it tails are often used for running and like there's a reason if if you're gonna do weird Anatomy which you should because you have a nonhuman character and it's your life you know fun yeah have fun don't we are saying that you know you have to face a lot of character sign off of real life and reference and Anatomy and blah blah blah but like the most important things to have fun and then go back and realize bits and pieces of your character more I like your characters tail but I think it could use a lord and either have a little more reason or just have more designing elements to it I like that Mercury's hair is almost like a spacey gradient um I think that's really cute and incorporates space maybe you could have that gradient that Spacey gradient somewhere else when you design - yeah but could go on the tail could be on the logo in a sweatshirt yeah um I think I'm gonna be honest I think the bright red shoes I think the red converse are really cute but I think the red goos here is just a little too like stop sign like you look lighter for sure yeah that's the first thing we look at and if that's what you want us to look at first fine but um I definitely think you can tone the red back a little bit just keep at it I think you're definitely heading in an interesting direction it looks like character was made with love try more things experiment and push it yeah don't be afraid to have fun and we're not saying don't include character bios like this because often times like this is really it's good its yeah one it's fun to it allows if someone else's drawing a character with this character like you know interacting together like you know they can play off these little details but um try to keep in mind if you want to show something you can show it visually you don't have to explain it very bright in here I think my fruit great thank you guys for watching thank you so much for helping us get to the point we're at thank you for thirty-five hundred subscribers thank you for a year of watching our content reacting to our content and participating in our community it means so much to us we only exist because of our fans so thank you thank you for all the submissions they were really overwhelmed by the response and we really think it's great that we could get this kind of reaction and we can help you guys continue to develop and innovate with your character design that's really amazing so thank you guys so much don't forget to Like and subscribe if you like this video share it with a friend and let us know in the comments if you'd like to see another video like this it already helped me just even by talking through these characters 9 traits and stuff it like gets me thinking bye everybody bye

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 39,108

Rating: 4.9687848 out of 5

Keywords: Subjectively, art tutorial, how to draw, critique, Character Design

Id: BPfLYgdFCaE

Length: 43min 18sec (2598 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019