FIVE Tips To Make Your Character Designs

More Dynamic & Believable

...with acompanying cheat sheet notes from PWP Episode 9
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Twitter.com/PaperWingsShow

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Your personal project, whether its an animated short film, a web comic, a picture book or any
other type of visual story, will have a strong dramatic and/ or comedic effect on your audience
when it features highly-realized characters who have been designed from the inside-out.
In the previous episode, Ten Questions To Ask Your Characters To Make Them More Dynamic
& Believable, we shared a questionnaire that will help you go deep with your characters, to
excavate their internal lives (emotions & thoughts) so they come to life on the page or screen in
front of you.
Below are some of our tips that will help you to design characters whose external lives surprise
and engage your audience... ...and you.
Enjoy this. Explore. Discover. Fly high. This is REALLY fun stuff.
1. Surprise Me:
- Put an unexpected spin on it and maybe use the opposites brainstorming technique.
- The opposites brainstorming technique:
- Draw 2 columns
- In the left column, Write out a list of words that come to mind when you think of
this character.
- Then fill the right column with words that are opposites or almost-opposite to
the words in the left column.
- This can spark surprising ideas for character designs.

Example: A character is really strong, but hes also really small.

-Incorporate a contrast: either conceptual or visual contrast.
Ex: Professor X is the most powerful mutant in the world... and hes paralyzed
2. A Strong Silhouette Is Everything:
- Use a variety of shapes and sizes and become a master of the visual cues necessary
for that type of character.
- Spongebob Vs. Batman
- Black out your favorite character designs and see if they are still recognizable.
- Variety of shapes: Small, Medium and Large.
- Appeal is found through a variety of shapes. - Stephen Silver
- Appeal is a whole crazy, abstract thing but shape-variation is one way to
think about it and its definitely true for Character Design.
- Gather reference and draw a lot of things that are like this character.
ex. Draw a lot of real giraffes if youre designing a giraffe character.
- Learn how to draw all its muscles, skeleton, etc. so that you your hand
instinctively knows all the visual cues it has to include (muscle memory)
to make this read believably as giraffe.
- What are visual cues necessary to this character, or type of character?
- Distill things into shapes
- Dont add too many details. Just enough for the style within which you are
working.
- More real world examples (like The Dreamer).
-What props are associated with your characters job/role?
ex. Fables: Flycatcher in his janitors uniform & frog hat. Hes always
hunched over his broom.
-Think about how Batmans silhouette is different from Spidermans and how
theyre both different from Supermans.
-Stance, body type, posture all play into it.
- Bruce Timms Superheroes have GREAT silhouettes.
- Look at his Batman: The Animated Series Season 4 designs. Even
the more normal characters have really interesting silhouettes. (Also,
his Superman...)
3.) Dont Waste Your Time With Turnarounds:
- Draw poses that capture your characters essence, as well as their clothing.
- Turnarounds, a.k.a. Orhtos or Orthographics dont usually accomplish
ANYTHING that a page of good, expressive, acting drawings cant accomplish.

- They often have no personality and are lifeless.

- Instead, draw the character in a pose that says something about him - that
captures the characters essence. Try a pose that wont work with someone else
on your cast. They all need their own body language, unique to them.
-You dont need to draw the sole of his shoe before you can draw the comic. Just draw
the bottom of his shoe if/when you need to and reference it from there!
(Animation is a bit different, esp. CG where you need everything mapped out but
that stuff still only happens near the end of the design phase.)
- PLANES is an exception because the characters are mechanical.
4.) Get Rid Of Your Cable:
- Avoid character cliches and arbitrary accessories that distract instead of enhance.
- Of course, we are referring to the Marvel Comics character known as Cable.
- Dont try SO hard to be unique (or edgy), that you actually become cliche.
- Arbitrary scars or tattoos on "tough guys" vs. Jack Shepherd's tattoo--unexpected, and
character driven.
- Zany colored hair on the 'wild girl' or too much leather & and arbitrary straps that lead
nowhere and hold nothing on.
5.) Find the Power Center:
- Power Centers concept is from Acting For Animators by Ed Hooks
- Identify the element in your design with the most gravitational force and use it to your
advantage.
- The Power Center is a Gravitational Force that draws all gestures, acting, body parts,
posture etc. toward it.
- Woody Allens is his Forehead
- Charlie Chaplins is floats down around his knees.

THE LOFTY THOUGHT:

Youre an artist. Youre a thinker, a feeler, a dreamer... ...and those thoughts and feelings
and dreams that are constantly filling your head and heart are revealed in the external. Your
clothes, your hair, your piercings or tattoos, your posture, your gestures... Even when you think

youre disguising your thoughts and feelings, they still find their way out.
Think about all the times youve tried NOT to look embarrassed...
This is the inside. The thought life. The emotional life. And it always affects the outside. The
external. The physical.
Every character you design should have a thought life and an emotional life that propels the
visual. This is what Lora and I mean when we talk about designing the character from the
inside out.
So theres the challenge. You can return to the last episode for some great questions to ask
that will help you get inside your characters thoughts and feelings. And if you can find that in
every character you design, your characters will be stronger and your project more dramatic,
funny or both.
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To higher art and truer stories!
Thanks for listening!
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Chris Oatley & Lora Innes host the Paper Wings Podcast which can be found on iTunes or at
PaperWingsPodcast.com and Twitter.com/PaperWingsShow