Week 9: Sketching and Storytelling

Biah S -

Hello everyone, and welcome to week 9!

This week I thought I’d talk a little bit about character design itself and what I’ve learned so far from my research. Overall, the number one takeaway I seem to get from most resources on the subject is that character design is about telling a story, communicating important ideas through visuals. The audience should start to gain a clear understanding of who the character is just by looking at them. This means everything about a character and their circumstances should be considered when determining what they’ll look like. This includes aspects of their personality, their role in the story, their culture, what climate they live in, their hobbies, and more. All of these can impact how a character looks and presents themself, and it’s important to be deliberate about which factors to communicate to the audience and how. Another key point I’ve seen brought up is clarity. Characters should be distinct and not too difficult to understand. Having characters with too many extraneous details or multiple characters with very little variety in their designs can result in confusion and hinder the story they are meant to tell. Of course, art and character design are very subjective, so there are no exact rules or regulations, but these are some basic concepts I thought were important and that I’ll be keeping in mind. I’ve started coming up with and sketching my own designs for my final product, and that’ll be a main focus of mine during these last few weeks of senior projects. My goal is to end with six characters, four protagonists and two antagonists. I may end up cutting down on that depending on what kind of artwork I’ll actually be doing for the final product, but I have the concepts for the first four done currently, so fingers crossed it all works out.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

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    madison_d
    Hello! When it comes to your final product, do you know what kind of prosocial messaging you're trying to get across to kids (i.e. cooperation, empathy, etc) and, if so, is that affecting the character designs?
    April 10, 2025 at 10:44 am - Reply
    theodore_t
    Hi! Since your previous post mentioned how children struggle sometimes with overly complex art and non-anatomically accurate characters, I assume the main variety in your characters will be movements, silhouettes, and colors. Do you know which one plays a bigger role in diversifying your characters for younger audiences? Adults view the world primarily with motion, then color, and lastly silhouettes, but it may be different for children.
    April 11, 2025 at 11:11 am - Reply
    FFM
    How would color effect how we interpret the characters when we first meet them?
    April 13, 2025 at 9:22 am - Reply
    Asher
    Excited to see the art you make! From my personal experience in research and character design, my advice on some things I've learned is that for characters that are super happy or kind, use more round shapes, and characters that are more tough or angry are squarer. Another way to make sure your character stands out is to look at its silhouette, and if you can still tell what character it is, there is a good chance your design is unique! Looking forward to seeing what you make.
    April 14, 2025 at 11:44 am - Reply
    Drostan
    Out of the aspects of character design you've identified for your game, which one do you think is the most challenging to effectively convey through visuals?
    April 14, 2025 at 11:56 am - Reply
    biah_s
    Hi Madison! I think I'm going to focus on cooperation, similar to what my site placement is trying to do, and I am trying to take that into consideration for my final designs.
    April 14, 2025 at 1:24 pm - Reply
    biah_s
    Hi Ted! I believe the same is true for children. I may not be able to incorporate movement into my final product as much as I would like, but I will definitely be paying attention to color and silhouette.
    April 14, 2025 at 10:36 pm - Reply
    biah_s
    Hi FFM! People tend to associate different colors with different concepts, and this can be used to communicate certain character traits within their design. For example, a character that is mainly colored in a lighter blue is more likely to be perceived as calm and collected than one that has a bright red as its primary color.
    April 14, 2025 at 10:48 pm - Reply
    biah_s
    Thank you Asher! Those are some important aspects of character design I didn't include in my blog post but that I for sure will in my final product!
    April 14, 2025 at 10:55 pm - Reply
    biah_s
    Hi Drostan! The one I've been finding most difficult has actually been color. I thought it wouldn't be too difficult to find colors that successfully match what I want each character to convey, but putting together an effective and coherent color scheme has proven to be more challenging than I thought.
    April 14, 2025 at 10:59 pm - Reply

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