How To Identify And Avoid Bad Character Design
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Tech
Believe it or not, there are differences between good and bad character design and designers. The 2D and 3D characters we see on our TV screen today were produced from iconic characters and these characters were designed before being animated. Before iconic characters can be made memorable and be able to tell stories, personalities are given to them. In this article, we want to discuss what can make your character design bad but before that let’s look at what character design is.
Character design can be defined as a fully processed character with style, behaviour, personality and visual appearance. It is constructed in a way of conveying stories. For a successful character design, it must be inspired by the character’s personality such as character psychology, colour theory and shape language. If you have articles related to this topic we accept guest posts on our website.
Bad Character Design and Pitfalls To Avoid
There are always unavoidable pitfalls when designing a character but if these pitfalls are avoided you are sure to make a memorable character.
The Following Are The Pitfalls To Avoid:
1. Too Complicated Character
Viewers and readers will choose simple designs over-complicated character designs. Complex character design creates fewer memories, is difficult to read and most importantly difficult to draw. An example of bad character design that is more complicated is final fantasy. In the final fantasy, the character has two belts, shields, multiple swords, badges, knee nickels, and an ankle funnel.
2. Expressionless Features
Before a story is told by your character, life must be seen in your creations. A unique expressive character brings out emotions in your reader or viewers. More facial expressions and body posture should be imbibed in a character to create a believable personality. When a character design lacks expression you may fail to have a connection with your audience and this makes it a bad character design. There are various examples of a bad character design with expressionless features such as Delgo.
3. Poor Selection of Colour Palette
No matter how great your design may be, a poor selection of colours can destroy the overall design of the character. When it comes to colour as a character designer you should not be too excited and start combining different colours instead you should be strategic. You want to try as much as possible to avoid using competitive colours.
Failure to consider the contrast of colours that will be used in the background or environment when selecting a colour could lead to having competing colours. A bad character designer will fail to avoid the use of competing colours during design. Being selective is very important when it comes to colour in character design. Failure to effectively utilize a colour palette in your design will result in distracting your audience instead of engaging them. Choose primary colours for the character and use other colours that will complement and not compete with each other.
4. Weak Character Silhouette
After removing every detail and colour, a character’s silhouette remains. Most of the famous characters became well known because the design was apparent and solid. To construct a unique character silhouette is very important as designers to have a better understanding of shape and form language. This will help you as designers to create good and successful character designs. With a strong character silhouette, it becomes very easy for people to recognize your character. You may have to redesign a character if you cannot easily identify the character through its silhouette. check some of the popular characters and how easy people can recognize them through silhouette.
5. Failure to Know Your Character
You must have a head knowledge of your character before diving into the drawing. Character designers commit this mistake frequently. You should first know and write about your characters in order to create fully great characters. It is not necessary to know everything about your character either. But is best to pen down notes and get to know your character.
You can choose to create a character sheet to pen down some things like name, gender, age, personality trait, hobby, like and dislike or extra details like tattoos, and scars. The idea is to note down important things about them so as not to forget. Getting to know your character more and more might bring more ideas and certain things that need to be changed or the addition of more personality. This gives you more vision of your character. This idea of writing down a character trait can be fun. It also brings out the creativity, storytelling ability and drawing skills in us.
6. Plagiarized Character
Copying character designs is illegal and can lead to sanctions. It is not bad when you get inspired by going through the character design portfolio of your mentor. To show love and respect for other professional artists. You can choose to create a fanart of their characters and this also helps you improve as an artist.
For example, hairstyle, clothes, and looks don’t belong to only one character. So when you like a particular character design what you need to do is to gather the outfit, look, design and hairstyle and use it as an inspiration to draw your character to make your character unique and not look plagiarized.
7. Concentrating on One Aspect of Your Character
Focusing on one facet of your character might send a wrong message to your audience. Don’t just focus on one particular trait when designing your character. A single trait does not define the characters accurately. At the same time, your audience may find it boring when your focus is majorly on one aspect of your character. Whether it is a female character design or a male character design, avoid focusing on one aspect.
In Conclusion
Character design from scratch can be very difficult as you need a sufficient amount of creative energy because the process can be complex. There is no specific process as the creative process differs from one designer to another. To become a better character designer you need to avoid the bad character design pitfalls listed above and be open to correction. You can also write for us if you have related or similar articles.
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