Hello all! Today I wanted to discuss the principles of character design at its basis.
As some of you know, I’m slowly branching out my talents from just fantasy writing to writing of all types as well as game design. As such, I’m intending to branch out to a wider audience when I discuss character design. This can refer to your heroes in writing, your D&D character ideas, or your game character art – it fits all facets!
1. Aim for simplicity. This goes especially well when drawing your characters and aiming to turn them into a 3D or otherwise design, but keep your characters simple and easy to either draw or remember. A good character has a quirk or two that, while unique, transfers well into drawing and doesn’t take a paragraph to describe in writing. Many writers I know of don’t bother to describe their characters’ clothes or all too much of their features. Leaving a wide chunk of the characters to the readers’ imagination is a powerful, but risky, tool.
If your characters are human by nature, they tend to already have a simple and easy-to-understand design to them. Their quirks can occur in eye color, hair color/design, their ears, facial features, weapons, or clothes. Heck, it might be a red scarf that makes them stand out from the norm, while the rest of their design is towards their unique abilities or how the story unfolds through them.
For example, I keep Ryoku’s design fairly simple. Blond hair, green eyes, slightly pointy ears. He doesn’t gain an otherwise remarkable feature either until Advocatos starts stirring (his eyes go red, his hair turns blacker) or when Loki gets him his favorite sweater, a white one with red stripes. I slowly add tweaks to his general description as he becomes more renowned, but a simpler character sets in more quickly, and more deeply.
2. Study. Even if you’re going for a fantastical approach, readers/players empathize more with characters that relay aspects of the world familiar to them. Study up on art references, real people, or other fantastical facets of our daily life. Even if you’re just writing and never intend your character to be seen visually, study references and know how they look to you. Their posture, their facial expressions, things that might never even be relayed in the book/game but other characters see in your character. It also helps build how other characters might reasonably treat your character, furthering the dynamic of your character development as a whole.
You can use all sorts of facets for this, and it doesn’t even have to be from real people. Especially in fantastical or humanoid creatures/settings, it pays off to study animals or other aspects of life. Pokemon is famous for its creator being inspired by collecting insects, and some its initial designs, albeit simplistic (see point 1!), have stuck in many peoples’ heads for decades.
Reference art for many of my characters has helped steer, or directly inspire, the final designs of many characters I use today. I can trace some of them back as far as when I first started to write, in fourth grade. Others have popped up between here and there, from shows, movies, books, games, dreams, real people, and many more different facets!
3. Know your target audience. This one easily spreads across the board. If you’re targeting young adult, how can you make your readers/players love your middle-aged mentor character? (Oftentimes its just that – make them a mentor and your readers will fall in love.) If you’re older and writing a younger character, use your inner experience or interact with those around you who can help you best portray that sort of character. It’s especially difficult if you’re developing for a target audience you’re unfamiliar with. Research and feedback will be your saving grace.
When designing a character for a video game or young readers, bright shapes and simplistic features go for miles. An older audience will especially love a grittier world and grittier characters, and can handle more details about your characters. Complexities appeal greatly to an older audience who can relate to their innermost workings.
In my case, Sovereign Soul is aimed for a sort of young adult audience. With a wide cast, I make most of my characters fairly simplistic in design, but deeper in their overall development through the story. Legendlore is aimed for both a slightly younger audience and avid readers of Sovereign Soul, so I aim to capture the magic of youth and imagination while uncovering the beginnings of a gritty story.
4. Consider your world. Unless you’re going for the fish-out-of-water mechanic, your character’s design should fit well within the world you’ve created. If most people around your characters’ home look normal, why does your character stand out? (Anime always has this central problem and never addresses it, but they seem to do fine – in deeper fantasy, don’t let yourself become this.) It is totally fine to have characters who, for some reason, look quite different than everyone around them, but this is usually addressed and has impact on the story.
If you’re using the fish-out-of-water concept, your character could be totally modern in a medieval or fantastical world, and you should consider every possible fallout of this design decision. In writing or game design, you should narrate their struggle to adopt the different style of life around them, how the clothes don’t fit the same, how their societal role differs here, and every other possible route it can take.
Of course, in Sovereign Soul, Ryoku fits this. In his world, the only thing that stands out oddly is his name, a trait he shares with the other Defenders for… reasons. Don’t worry, it’ll be covered. Other than that, he does blend in with the people in the normal world pretty well, besides being an oddball. He even dresses differently between worlds to fit in, which is why outfits are a little more important in my narrative. Since the spirit realm is made of different realms of different styles and eras, he fits into some better than others, but his close friendship with Syaotoan soldier Will helps him settle more into the medieval manner of speech. Although he hides his Defender status in many worlds, being a Defender means he can act a little strangely and nobody really bats an eye. In most places.
5. Remember their personality. As people, our personality greatly affects how we dress ourselves, how we carry ourselves, and certain design choices we might make. A shy character might dress conservatively, with hair that covers their eyes sometimes and a fairly poor, often submissive, posture. The same traits aren’t usually shared by the boisterous flirt, who, even as a male, might show more skin and show off what they may think is a very attractive face. This is a great character aspect to observe in the real world, but harder to translate into writing or design.
Writers have an easier time. We have pages of interactions to subtly spell out how a character doesn’t meet someone’s glance, how their chest swells when they get a compliment, or how they sit on the edge of their seat during a boring meeting. And that’s how it is best done – subtly. Sure, you can introduce your character by explaining they’re a boisterous flirt or noting it in their profile, but the same character isn’t often a shut-away who dresses in too-long sleeves and covers their face with their hair.
I blend this in Sovereign Soul. Ryoku likes comfortable clothes, long sleeves and hair that covers a lot of his face, but he unwittingly flirts with characters who are nice to him. Will, an outdoorsy soldier, focuses more on practicality than what others might think. Kai wears a sleeveless jacket that bares his ‘muscles’ and uses a headband to show more of his ‘provocative face’ while keeping his raven hair sorted. His shirt is even low-cut to display the Angel Destined mark, something he thinks women are into.
There’s a lot to remember about character design, but most of you readers probably already have some idea of what you want to do, or at least a world to build off of. If you have a general idea, it’s easy to use these guidelines to finetune your idea into a full-fledged design. As always, stay tuned for more writing tips and blog posts from me, as well as coming news about the betterment of my coming 2nd book. I appreciate the support!
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Sovereign Soul 