How To Make Original Characters, by A Character Designer: 8 EASY steps
As a character designer in animation, there is ONE major thing you need to be able to do — Storytell and if you can’t… well… I will show you how.
My name is Michele Miller I am a 22-year-old artist, writer, and animation student, who is heavily influenced by a love of storytelling and a brain that never stops creating. From as little as four, I was always drawing and writing little stories for the characters I drew. Running around with my drawings telling my mom and grandpa all about my characters and their background stories. Anyways, fast-forward eighteen years later and I now studying for what I didn’t know back then, my dream career — character design. For more on my design process check out my YouTube channel cheledraws, for more aesthetic art-related content.
STORY
Let us get into the thick of it. How do I make my characters original, interesting, intriguing? Well, think about the story you want to tell. Let's say my story is going to be about a goofy space adventure, fast-paced, action-packed, all that jazz. The main character needs a GOAL for the story something needs to happen, and let's go with a girl, (because I love drawing girls). Now, let's set up the setting and time this is all taking place. I love Sci-Fi so let's do the year 2110 and space travel is a common thing around this time (I hope).
GOAL
What does your character want to do? What is the main objective for this character, and for this specific story? Let's continue with our example, our girl character, and name her Juna. She has a passion for space travel and wants to be the first human to visit Jupiter. Her conflict is, that Jupiter is a giant gas planet with toxic air and there is no surface for you to land on. We just created a goal for this character and a problem to overcome. That not only helps build the character, but also the storyline of your project. Now, it's time to niche down and get a more clear understanding of Juna’s background and why this is such a goal of hers.
BACKSTORY
The backstory doesn't have to be too broad, the audience doesn’t need to know about her learning how to ride a bike when she was twelve, because that isn't directly related to the story. Now if we said she grew up watching her dad fix and work on their family spaceship and she has always wanted to fly it to Jupiter, then that would be an important detail. Their family spaceship is something sentimental to her, and she really wants to use that on her adventure to Jupiter. Good backstory elements to add are:
- Parents
- Friends
- Memories (good or bad)
- School years
- Childhood
- Challenges
- Personal struggles
- Home environment
- Poor, middle class, or rich
These are great ways to start getting your imagination juices flowing, on where to start.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Every living being has a strength and weakness, no one is perfect. You can make a character that appears to be perfect, but also struggles internally with different elements like family, drugs, and mental health. We are all flawed in some way and it's good to show that in characters for them to feel more relatable to the audience. Let's incorporate this into Juna and say her strength is being passionate and determined to get things accomplished, but her weakness is not thinking through her goals or making plans. She wants to go to Jupiter but, doesn't have enough money to go, doesn't know how she is going to land, and needs a team. Juna doesn't have much of a plan on how to get this adventure up and running, but she deals with things head-on because she is so determined. Some ideas for strengths and weaknesses are-
Strengths:
- Passionate
- Strong
- Caring
- Smart
Weaknesses:
- Being too nice
- Lazy
- Rude
- Envious
These are some good starters and you can branch off of these and make different combos and contradictions like being nice but too nice to where you get bullied and used by people. These types of tropes are super interesting especially if you have a good story to go along with it, that really highlights the dynamic really well.
HABITS & MANNERISMS
This is another helpful tool to expand on your character's personality. These are basically turn-on/turn-offs for a character and what they do, like a little symbol of their personality. For instance, Juna loves journaling, because she likes jotting down places and things she has done and wants to accomplish, before bed. Her mannerism could be that she is always high-fiving people because she loves to be high energy and include others in her high energy bubble. This not only adds more to Juna’s personality but, also makes her unique and stand out from other fictional characters.
Habits and Mannerisms:
- Waking up early to exercise
- Being a vegetarian
- Drinking only dark coffee
- Only watches one show
IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS
What can really help your main character evolve is having other characters for them to react with. As noted earlier, Juna loves her father and has even spent time with him building and fixing their spaceship. Her father never got the chance to travel to space in it, but she wants to for him. We also noted she needs crewmates on her ship to help her fly and maintain it. She can go along in the story trying to assemble her team through quirky ways and ends up getting four even quirkier members to join her adventure. We have a map and a guiding girl, whose quiet and clumsy. The muscle guy who really loves cute things, and the smart skinny guy who has a crush on all the girls, and that’s our team. A fun mixture of personalities and people, that influence each other. Think of relationships and past relationships that can, and have had an influence on your characters, like Juna and her dad.
LIVING CIRCUMSTANCES
Where your character lives or lived can help shape their personality strongly. Environment is everything to your mood and your energy and is important for a storytelling aspect. Juna and the team will live on her dad’s small spaceship for their trip to Jupiter and that is the present living situation, but what if we go into the past. Let's say Juna grew up in a charming small rural town and with only her dad and cat, Tuna. Her dad was a small-town mechanic and barely made enough to pay the bills. We covered Juna’s past and present living situations now, and have a greater understanding of her. The living circumstance can be anything you think of as long as it goes along with the story or enhances it.
APPEARANCE & DESIGN
The fun begins. The design of a character is EVERYTHING. It helps attract first impressions and first impressions lead to people wanting to know more about them. The design and appearance of your character should be based on the personality, of course, so include things and little trinkets that would be a part of your character and their design. Take inspiration from fashion and runway shows of your favorite designers during the time period your character is in. Take inspo from characters you like, DON’T COPY them, but apply certain aspects of a character and make it your own. Here is our character Juna:
And that's it guys. Character designing is such an important process, especially in the creative field. If you don’t have an interesting enough dynamic character, it can ruin any story no matter what it is about. So take the time to really flesh out your main character(s), for all our sakes. Go make beautiful characters for your stories, animations, or comics. Thank you for coming to my Chele Talk. Enjoy the process and stay creative guys!