If I were to show you these three characters, and ask you to pick out the one who, within the show's narrative, was meant to be a stunningly beautiful fashion model, then which one would you choose? Some of you may have picked Ami, the blue-haired girl, which is the correct answer, but I'm guessing there's at least a significant proportion of you that did not. And the reason for this is that Ami's character design did not give you the significant visual information to discern what kind of character she's meant to be. There's nothing you could really pick up on that would lead you to believe that she's anything more than just a plain old Background-chan. Which is a shame, because she's a great character from a great show, and a stronger design would have greatly enhanced her appeal. What's unusual though, is that she is from the show Toradora, whose main character Taiga has an extremely iconic design, one that's striking and instantly recognisable, resulting in an avalanche of merchandise, and even landing her a guest spot in the 2015 fighting game Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax. And so the question is: Why does Taiga's design work, when Ami's doesn't? What is it that separates these two characters' appearance? Or, to broaden it out a little, what is it that makes a good character design? When you really think about it, relating to a fictional character is a pretty strange thing to do. After all, all a character really is is a group of abstract personality traits, beliefs, and motivations, all tied to the visual symbol that our brains interpret as their physical appearance. And that symbol is their character design. The discussion around what makes a character design effective and what doesn't is an interesting one. However, it's also probably one of the most nebulous and subjective areas in media, as what kind of design we're going to relate to is about as varied as what kind of person we're going to be attracted to, with the answer varying a great deal from person to person. And arguably, even more so in anime, when so many characters are designed with the specific intent of having a niche appeal. Something aimed at a very small but highly specific audience, who will hopefully pay for the expensive costs of the Blu-Rays and merchandise in order to keep seeing their favorite characters. Do you like small blonde girls dressed as Victorian maids who also happen to be half-dragon? Well I got some good news for you, buddy! But that said, surely there has to be a group of unifying principles that tie this highly unspecific area together? Well, I think the best way to think about it is that a character design, like all design, is a solution to a problem. It's an answer to a question, and to really understand an answer, we need to first get to grips with the question. And the general question presented by character design is: How do we express a fictional personality as a real person? Well friends, to that question, what say we take a voyage to the exciting and sexy world... ...of semiotics. Semiotics, to brutally oversimplify, is the study of symbols and how different visual objects come together to create meaning. For example, if we combine a pillow, a mattress, a quilt, and a bed frame, we will get the concept of a bed. Individually, these objects have very limited meaning, but combined, they carry the cultural and societal context of a bed, and everything that a bed is associated with. And to once again grossly oversimplify, this is the very basics of how character design works. The different visual components of a character coming together to create meaning. For example, if we take a blank character and add the single visual element of a hat, that hat is going to imply meaning. You're not just going to read this character as someone who happens to own a cowboy hat, it's much more likely you're going to read them as actually being a cowboy. In other words, you're assigning them an identity based on a visual signifier, and if we change the signifier, we change the identity. And so, all character design is is a combination of visual signifiers, which can be anything from clothes, accessories, hairstyle, gender, race, even body type and facial expression. And the more specific we get with our signifiers, the more information we can infer about said character. With that in mind, what say we break apart one of the most iconic Japanese character designs, that of Jotaro Kujo from Jojos part three: Stardust Crusaders. First off, we look at Jotaro's proportions and we can see that he is extremely tall, measuring around nine heads high, which is far taller than the standard seven. His broad shoulders, narrow waist, and muscular frame suggest that he's probably in pretty great shape. But he also wears his trademark long flowing coat, or more specifically, a gakuran, which is the school uniform worn by many Japanese high schools. Which lets us know that despite his adult-looking appearance and the fact that he is more of a man than I could ever DREAM of being, he's still of high school-going age. But there is also a lot of symbolism attached to this piece of clothing, as it's associated with the delinquent culture of 70's and 80's Japan, which became so popular in manga of that era that it spawned its own sub-genre. And so Jotaro wearing like he does, hanging open, often with a bright pink t-shirt underneath, speaks to his identity as a delinquent. And the fact that he's customized the uniform further with this long golden chain says a lot about his rebellious nature and his complete disregard for authority. His two colorful belts suggest that, while a delinquent, he's still someone that takes pride in his appearance. And finally his hat, which bathes his eyes in shadow, which both serves to make his thousand-yard stare that much more intimidating, while also adding to the character an air of mystery. Araki's given several different reasons as to why the cap actually seems to blend into Jotaro's hair, but the one that seems to make the most sense to me is that the hat is actually torn at the back, hence it just looks like Jotaro's hair. And the reason I think this works is because it sells the idea that Jotaro is someone who gets into a lot of fights. And then finally, the small golden hand emblem just above the peak. And this one actually had a double meaning. For one, it's the symbol of, and I apologise about butchering this pronunciation, "Abhayamudrฤ," which is a symbol of fearlessness or protection against evil in many Indian religions, which says that as much of a punk as Jotaro is, there's a heroic side to him too. The second meaning is that this is also the logo for Lucky Land Communications, which is the studio of Hirohiko Araki, Jojo's author. The symbolism being that this is meant to be the hand of a manga artist, someone who must spend a massive amount of time creating manga, and whose hand has grown swollen and callused because of it. And so from this one seemingly simple character design, look at just how much information we can infer. And perhaps we may not be able to understand all of it at first glance, especially the more symbolic aspects, but it's fascinating to look at just how much information is coded into this design, and how it all comes together to give him the visual identity of a total badass. And there's a lot of cases where even very subtle touches can add a lot to a character's visual identity. Take, for example, one of my favorite character designs from one of my favorite character designers, Shinobu from the Suda51 game No More Heroes, designed by Yusuke Koizaki. This is an especially fun design to break down, her stylish prep school uniform contrasting with her dark ninja accessories, but perhaps my favorite touch of all is right here. Check out this one shot, where we get a close up of her sword hilt, and to it, she's attached a collection of phone charms. Phone charms originated as a part of Japanese street fashion, and usually attached to, of course, a phone. A piece of technology that will be the most important thing to the majority of teenagers, as it connects them to their peers and the world around them. But Shinobu instead has attached the charms to her sword as opposed to her phone, which I think creates this great visual metaphor for both her innocence as a young girl, and the danger she presents as a hired assassin. And this duality goes right to the heart of her character, and it's fantastic to see it subtly, yet so effectively represented in her design. And so I think from these two examples, you can see how there is a visual code at work with good character design, and while you cannot underestimate how important this aspect is of character design, perhaps equally important is the visual language used to represent this information. For example, if we say that a character's main visual signifier is a large, muscular body, we could either be talking about either Takeo from Ore Monogatari, or Toguro from Yu Yu Hakusho. Both these characters are defined by their large, muscular frames. But the thing that separates them is the visual language used in their depiction. Takeo is essentially a large, bevelled square. He has no harsh edges or unsightly detail, he's depicted with these simple, sloping lines, which make the character feel warm and cozy. While Toguro, on the other hand, is built out of aggressive, angular shapes, each minute muscle grossly depicted with gnarled, knotted lines. Same signifier, completely different results. And so what this really comes down to is line and shape. Perhaps one of the best breakdowns I've ever seen of this concept is from the artist Tato, who last year put out these fantastic pieces of Overwatch fanart, breaking the characters down into their most fundamental aspects. Tato later uploaded a tutorial for their methodology, explaining how each character was essentially made up of one or more of three fundamental shapes. And depending on which shapes you use, that particular aspect of the character will be accentuated. Round for charismatic, harmless, and endearing, box for reliable, uniform, and traditional, and triangle for cunning, dynamic, competent, and aggressive. And so through this methodology, we can see how the character is reduced to the bare minimum in terms of visuals, while still conveying a massive amount of personality. Just look at how Zarya is basically just a giant square, highlighting her sturdy, steadfast, and reliable nature, and how Ana is just a giant triangle, showing the veteran sniper's cunning confidence. Or even look at how these different shapes combine to give different feelings. For example, the king of edgelords Reaper is represented by a square and a triangle, representing both his competence on a team, while also accentuating his aggressive, angry nature. And, by the way, I highly recommend you go check out Tato's Tumblr, it is absolutely fantastic. Even though Tato's Overwatch pieces are a very extreme example of this, you can see this same methodology at work in far more complicated designs. You can even blank out the detail completely, and a well-designed character will still read from just the silhouette alone. And so really, there are so many ways a character's design can be used to tell us more about them, which I think makes it unfortunate that so many designs throughout anime and video games seem to focus merely on creating a character that looks cool, or just has a surface-level appeal, instead of actually pushing the traits that make that particular character unique. Designs with large amounts of detail that say practically nothing about who the actual character is. Which is such a shame, because effective use of all these principles can greatly help communicate who a character is, and even define their relationship to the world around them. Just look at what Saitama's simple, handmade costume says about him in a world of slick and stylish superheroes, or how the massive difference in Rei and Asuka's personality is immediately, visibly identifiable, merely by the shape and color of their hair. Character design can even be a powerful storytelling tool in and of itself. I can't think of a better or more immediate way to communicate a character's journey through life than the slow evolution of their character design. There's something so impactful about seeing a character you love age and grow old, watching as the scars of time slowly become etched into their physical appearance. And taking all these factors into account, it makes you realize that character designs can do so much more than just sell merchandise. When they start to say something real, something genuine about the fictional person they are representing. This, friends, begins to be what makes a good character design. Friends, that's going to do it for this video. I want to once again thank you for joining me today. I'm aware we barely touched on color here, but honestly that's such a big topic it probably needs its own video. But I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did, consider heading over and checking out my Patreon, where for no more than a single dollar, you can help me create more videos like this and in doing so, see your name listed with these beautifully fantastic people right here. I will, as always, be back soon with another video, but in the meantime why not come join me on the Let's Fight A Boss video game podcast, where we'll be talking Breath of the Wild and whether the Nintendo Switch is a roaring success or a crushing failure. Or you can catch me on Twitter at @Eyepatchwolf. Friends, take care of yourselves, and I'll see you next time.
I always love learning about what goes into character design, they may look simple at first, but like what Super Eye patch Wolf said, there's a lot more going on than first appears.
I loved the breakdown of Jotaro's character design as well, was really cool to look at small details in depth.
Super Eyepatch Wolf is one of the best new youtubers out there, please check him out. It is worth your time.
I liked how he shows Alphonse a couple of times in the video. Alphonse has a great character design because his character design is about as far from his actual character as possible. It's intentionally showing that he doesn't belong in that body.
So, Good Character Design = Explain the Character's personality/archetype just by their appearance? Isn't that highly myopic in scale considering this sort of definition will never work in certain fiction?
Take Ami from Toradora, the example of "bad character design" stated in the video. What's Ami suppose to be? She is a young beautiful model that has enrolled in school, so her design is fairly simple; beautiful, long hair and wears the typical school uniform as you would expect.
But here's the thing, Ami is far more complex than just being a normal, caring airhead. She hides her real feelings behind a mask, and the normal appearance is in fact a smokescreen to her true personality.This plays around our expectation of Ami being simply a token pretty girl with her standard appearance, when in reality she can be a manipulative and fairly outspoken individual.
In short, Good Character Design doesn't always mean the appearance must exude their personality. Good Character Design is finding a balance between showcasing the character's personality AND the context of the situation the character is in.๏ปฟ
I never actually looked it up, but isn't Jotaro's belt the same design/style as Caesar's headband in part 2? Not really relevant but just something...
> says that Taiga's great design lends her into being featured in Dengeki Bunko
> shows Mahouka characters as overdesigned
> Miyuki's in Dengeki Bunko
Just kidding, great video as always SEW!
I think he goes just a bit too far into trying to look into what character design means. While in most cases he's pretty right, and a lot of what he says about Jotaro probably make sense, he also neglects to mention that maybe a lot of it was just because Araki thought it was cool/interesting. All of the JoJos have very unique designs and so he thought up something that would fit Jotaro. Another thing that slightly irks me is the Asuka/Rei thing at the end. I feel like facial expression and body language goes a lot further than character design to show how the characters are. The two are pretty similar outside of hair length/color which is where the first example that the video starts out with points out that doesn't really help all that much. The reason we associate short blue hair or flamey red hair with those two character archetypes is because of EVA I think, not necessarily the other way around.
According to the thumbnail, being made by Trigger is a good starting point. /s
I love this guy's content. Wish I was as well spoken and capable of making equally good content in my videos.