How Do I “Design Characters” for My Comics? – The Process (Part 2)

This is what I wish I had known about character design, which is to draw with principles. When we sit in front of a sheet of paper to design our character, you might often be clueless. You don't know what to draw or how to draw it. I mean, you can draw by looking at things, but the moment you need to draw something from your own imagination, boom, nothing. This is because all the things that we know about drawing characters is just not enough or it's wrong. It's just tricks and tactics that we know, but what we need is something more foundational. And that is principles, which is a way of thinking. So in the last episode of Mini Comics, we talked about how I come up with story ideas and paneling and composition for your mini comics. And in this one, I want to show you how I design characters for my mini comics using character design principles. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Kesh and welcome to the KeshAwar show. Episode two. All right, so a bit recap. Now we're on step four of my making mini comic process. The first three steps is all about getting your story idea, scope planning, paneling and composition and thumbnailing your mini comic. And now it's character design. But within character design, you've got a couple of more steps. So what I'm going to do right now is design one of the five characters that I need for my mini comic. The rest of the characters are already done and dusted. And I'm going to show you the kind of process that I use to design those characters by designing this character. So let's start. My character design process is five steps that help me go from this, whatever this thing is, to this, a fully finished character that is ready to be used in my comic. By the way, everything I'm talking about in this episode is summarized into my 40 page guidebook called Sketch to Character. So stick till the end of this video to download it. It's free, by the way. First step is the idea. What I do right now is I start with an idea for my character. What is the character? What is it? What are the details of the character like age, gender, clothing, job, likes, dislike, political opinions? Doesn't matter. I often imagine these things and keep this in my head, but also it's good to note it down. But here's the thing. This is what we call a character brief. We're giving ourselves the limitations with which we want to build our character so that the wants and constraints we have in our character is not super vague. Now, let me be super honest with you. I always note these things down. And most of the time when I'm designing a character, the idea is just a single word. For example, I need to design five characters for this mini comic, which is a soul like spirit character, a warrior, a farmer, a blacksmith, and a modern desk job guy. So these are the five characters I want to create for these things. And all I have for these characters are these simple words. So what I'm trying to say is for a small project like a mini comic, you don't have to create this detailed character brief and waste your time. Don't do that. You can just start with a simple word, which is like a verb or an action or a noun. And then you just go from there. Or you can use an adjective. The amazing Spider-Man. See, I think I used it right. I'm bad with grammar. So yeah. Now, once I have that word down or that character brief down, I close my eyes and ask myself, what is the first vision I have of this character? And then comes the character thumbnail. The moment I have an approximate vision for my character, I quickly take out my sketchbook and draw a bunch of super rough thumbnails. These are what I call character thumbnails. These are thumbnail sketches that are drawn often very fast with flat, simple, and 2D shapes. Now, this is where I start using character design principles, which is a way of thinking. What the heck are you talking about, Kesh? All right. Let's take the principle of shapes. For example, one of the character design principles that I use to draw characters. The whole principle states that your character needs to have certain core shapes in order to have clarity in its design. And that means I ask myself, what are three to five key shapes that would define the design of my character? And these shapes are often 2D, simple shapes that defines my character. And this foundational principle actually comes from studying and understanding other character designs that are out there. Think of it like this. There are thousands of characters that are out there in the world. You can learn to draw each and every single one of them bit by bit and step by step. Or you can learn how to draw all of them by learning the foundational principle, which is basically saying give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man a fish, you'll feed him for life. So if you give someone the character design principles, they can draw any character that they want. And there are approximately 10 character design principles that I use in order to draw characters. For example, I start with the principle of shapes, which states that every character is defined by a core set of shapes that gives clarity in design. So when I'm thumbnailing, I'll ask myself, what are the core three to five shapes that will help me define the design of my character? For this humanoid character that I'm designing, I usually look at the head, body, the legs and arms. These are four approximate shapes that I need to decide for. And then I ask myself, what kind of shapes will I use for each of these things in order to define the design of that character? To keep it more simple, if you look at any character design, you can actually find three key shapes that will define the look of that character. And that's what this principle of shapes is all about. And there are very many other principles that I'll use, which will sort of add on like filter upon filter upon filter upon filter on my design, which will help me get the final design. All right, back to character thumbnailing. Now, I also use the principle of clarity, which is keeping the character efficient in terms of clarity so that it travels well, meaning simple designs and clear designs travel faster, more than complex designs. And the way I test this thing is basically by turning these simple thumbnails that I've drawn into silhouettes and opening them up. If you have a character that is a bit more close, it's often hard to recognize the character. But when it's open and it's more clearer in its shapes, the character is often more clearer. And that's what this principle of clarity is all about. So we're still in the thumbnailing phase. What I'm doing is using simple key shapes and making sure it's clear enough and open enough as a character and marking all the important details down that is there in my character using these simple key shapes. Another thing that I look out for while I'm doing this, which is the principle of flow, which is to create rhythm in your designs, meaning you don't want your characters to be stiff. So I use line of actions and varying shapes and arrangement of shapes within the design to make it more flowy and rhythmic. For example, here's a badly arranged set of shapes, which creates a very strict and a stiff character design. And here's a more loosely and rhythmically arranged set of shapes that creates a more flowy character design. So that is it. The goal of this phase is for me to basically get these quick, rough thumbnail sketches, following and thinking about these principles down on paper so that I can go ahead and research. Yeah, that's what I do next. Now it's time for me to do some research. We got the first draft of our design down on paper. And this step is all about letting external influences affect your design. This is where you take inspirations from the world around you, be it offline or online into your design. We're searching for things and elements and ideas that could affect our character. This includes things like style, how realistic or abstract do you want your designs to be, visual motifs that you like, a way a hat is drawn or a body part is drawn or the way the character in general is drawn, the end rendering style that we want to use in our designs. All these things are some things that you want to decide at this phase and often actually allow yourself to be affected by these external influences. And the way I do this is by going to Pinterest. Basically, that's it. Just create a board on Pinterest. Now, here's the thing. You want to create a mixture of other people's character designs that you really admire and real life things that you want to actually take into your because real life is the source of all designs. You want to take that and put it in your character, not just create a franklinstein of other people's characters. Don't do that. So the inspiration I have for this warrior character is from like the Vikings, but I want to take that and sort of give it a more cartoonish vibe and it affect like Dexter's lab meets the Vikings. That's the idea that I have. Most designers actually keep this as the second step or even the first step that they do as part of their character design process. I don't. And simply for one reason, I want to create a unadulterated version of my character down on paper. My voice just broke right now. That's why I just changed. I want to create an unadulterated version of my character design from my beautiful brainy head down to the paper so that I can be original. Time for us to draw the character. We were here, which is all we just have this one word, an idea for a character. Then we came here, we have like a rough thumbnail of the character and then we want to get from here to here. How does this thing even happen? The thing that's between these two things is the character design principles. First is the principle of simplicity. For the head of this character, I have a vision in my head of this character having a beard and a mustache and a bun, sort of like a nice man bun right there. And the principle of simplicity is basically taking the most essential items of the vision you have in your head or the image that you're basically using, and then getting down to its most essential version or part or the design. So here's how it goes. The drawing of this little reference that I have on the left. And if I just simply draw it as it is, this is what I get like all the details and all the things. It's not super realistic, but it's not super cartoony and simple as well. And the principle of simplicity is this, everything that you want to draw has a bunch of data points. It's got this kind of a hair, this much detail in the hair, this kind of a beard, this much detail in the beard, this kind of an eye, this much detail in the eye, right? And what you are essentially doing is picking the most important points in that entire thing and then representing it in a very simple and an essential way. Basically, it's going from this to this. For example, the beard, there's so much texture out here. You don't need all that. What we need is simply the shape and for the eyes, just taking all the essential elements and then forgetting the rest. That's the idea. So with these things in mind, I'm going to go ahead and draw another version or a more slightly detailed version of my thumbnail. All right, so I've drawn a more refined version of my thumbnail, but here's a problem. I have made a mistake, which is this. Adding the details before getting the base right. I don't like this body shape, right? It's not interesting enough. It's so bland. It's so boring. So here's where I'm going to go ahead and use the principle of representation. I want to take the different body parts of this character and try to represent it in a different way, which is like this. The upper body right here becomes this ovular shape with this skull like thing right here. This is one and the lower body becomes much smaller and then the legs become a lot wider and shorter because I want that effect in my design and I want the arms to be massive. So I'm taking this arm and making it a lot larger. Then I want these huge traps and then somewhat of a cartoony head. And let's not forget the man bun. So what I'm doing right here is taking the different parts of the early thumbnail that I took, that I made, and then trying to represent it in a different way by A, exaggerating the shape or distorting the shape or literally modifying the shape. Like this shape became this. This arm shape basically became something like this. So this is what I'm doing right now. I've sort of established a base shape and upon which I will do a base construction because we don't want just a 2D character. We want a 3D character that is constructed out of three-dimensional forms. So that's where the principle of construction comes in, where you use forms like spears and modified cubes and cylinders to build and construct a solid base for your character. We are also creating variation in our design. You don't want your character to be just bland, just one thing after another thing after another thing. You want a bit of variation, a bit of spice. So you can create variation in terms of say size of things, where this is one massive size, this is one medium size, this is one small size. This is one sort of variation and you can create variation in terms of shapes. I'm using more circular shapes right here and more boxy shapes right here for the character and then slightly more angular but not too much of an angular shape right here for this character. And the third kind of variation is sort of creating variation in terms of lines. You can see I use a lot of straights and curves paired together in my design in order to make it more interesting. Pairing straight lines and curved lines and see curved straights, curved straights, curved straights. Now I'm not doing this consciously, it sort of comes a bit unconsciously or subconsciously but you practice this. Now see I'm adding more details with these straights and curves and adding a bit more. See I don't want this to be just round, I want this to be a bit pointed because right here I have a more rounded shape. I want a more pointy shape right here, variation and then more rounded shape and then creating this. I have a more varied design of my character upon which I obviously go ahead and make a solid form and a base out of it. Once this base is constructed and only then I'll go ahead and add in the details. And how do you add those details? What makes those realistic details stylized? Going back to the principle of simplicity which is taking all those essential elements and things that we see in real life or in our vision and then just asking ourselves what are the essentials and what is the simplest way I can represent that and then bringing it down on the paper in the most simplest way possible. So if you do that for each and every single element, for the hair, for the mustache, for the eyes. The eyes can be drawn like this but now it's drawn in a very circular fashion. The mustache can be drawn like this but now it's drawn in a more simpler fashion. The clothing can be drawn in a very complex way with all these folds and details but right now it's drawn in these super simple triangles and a bit of half semi circles. These are all ways of making things absolutely simple and that is what I think about when I'm sort of designing these characters. What is the real life inspiration? What is the vision that I have? How can I ask myself the question of what are the essential items and making it simple and in that simplicity you will find your style and that is the idea and you do the entire thing for the design you will have the character ready. With that we're on to the last and the final step which is inking and coloring your designs. This is going to be one of the quickest parts of this entire process because the way I ink is basically take a brush pen and just go over the entire damn character. Now I'll attach a separate inking tutorial right here so that you can simply watch and see how I ink a character from start to finish. But here are some of the things that I keep in mind when I'm inking the character which is to keep the depth that I created during the pencil and the sketching I want that in my inks and the way I do that with a lot of strokes and then creating a lot of line weight making sure lines are thin where they need to be thin and thick where they need to be thick. Now the coloring part I try to keep it simple because for many comics especially comics in general you'll be drawing the character and coloring it over and over again then that means you got to keep the process as simple as you possibly can and the way I do that is by just thinking about colors like this. I choose a primary color a complementary color a necessary color and the accents. For example every character I have a primary color that stands out this is the core color of the character and then I choose the complementary color that goes along with the primary color which is usually the clothes of the character sometimes the skin. I want these two colors to go well with each other and that is what I'm aiming for a complementary color scheme and then I have the necessary colors these are colors that I cannot skip sometimes the hat is black and the mustache is white or the eyes is in this color the hand is in this color these are colors that I cannot skip what I then try to do is basically pair my necessary colors and adjust it accordingly to my primary and complementary color and in this way I create a map of colors that is based on those two important colors and once I'm done with that I sometimes use an accent color which is like something there's a bit of a touch it's like a little hint that just pops the thing out and that's what I do when it comes to colors and the color process is pretty simple you lay down the flats a layer of shadows and a layer of highlights. Gotta keep it simple for comics this is how you do it and that my friends is how I draw and design characters for comics and animation that is the process that is it. Now if your brain tells you that you can design and draw the comics that you want to draw or design the characters that you want to draw right it's probably right listen to that and you do it anyway because the best way to get ready to make a comic that you want to make is to make a comic