Intro

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an artist along with a writer, and being able to do my own artwork has proven to be a very useful—and fun—skill to have, especially when paired with my writing. I’m fortunate enough to have an advantage that a lot of writers don’t have, as I don’t necessarily have to hire an artist to do things like character art for me, and I can make images that match exactly what I want, rather than having to try to find stock ones that I can use.

But my favorite way to incorporate art into my writing is by designing the characters in my stories. While I can describe the character as much as I want on the page, I never really know how they look until I have a more visual representation of them. Also, drawing the character helps me see if something that I described in the book actually looks weird when I’m actually seeing it, like if the colors of their clothes don’t match well or something. (I’m a visual person; they must be fashion-conscious.) 

No matter what type of character I’m designing, there are always some basic things that I try to keep in mind, which I’ll be going over now.

Personality

Personality is important in pretty much all aspects of creating a character, and their appearance is no exception. A person’s personality can dramatically impact how a person chooses to look, whether it’s by influencing their choice in clothing, how they wear their hair, or what sorts of accessories they might fancy. And, of course, because the character is fictional, you can also add less intentional details to further communicate the person’s personality, like scars on their face to make them look more brutal or battle-experienced, or large eyes to make them look young or innocent.

Not only can a character’s appearance influence how the reader might perceive them and their personality, but it can also influence how other characters do too, especially if it’s during a first meeting and they’re getting their first impressions of each other. Sometimes those perceptions remain the same throughout the story, but sometimes they can change as the characters get to know each other better.

Which, of course, leads me to the topic of having a character’s appearance be deceiving. For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve always liked characters whose appearance is kind of a contrast to their actual personality. Scary-looking characters who are actually very friendly, friendly-looking characters who are actually kind of scary…It’s just a fun concept to me, so it’s one that I often incorporate into my stories. Most of the time when I do this, though, I do try to show some hint of their personality in their design, even if it’s not glaringly obvious, like by making an otherwise innocent-looking character have a gruesome scar somewhere that hints at some sort of past hardship. It doesn’t necessarily scream that they’re actually a crazy psycho killer or anything (even if they may well be), but it does imply that maybe they’ve been through more than one would expect when looking at their wide eyes and open smile.

Setting and Background

Obviously, the setting of the story that the character is going to inhabit is going to impact a few things about their overall appearance. Things like how they dress and do their hair can easily be influenced by how the people around them do it, along with whatever their personality is. And how the people around them do it has to be influenced at least in part by what resources are available to them, which is often based on the setting. Like, if I’m writing a fantasy novel that starts out with the main character living in a small, poor village, they probably wouldn’t have access to much fancy clothes, makeup, or jewelry, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to have any of that—assuming that they could even afford it, which is a problem that can be brought up when their background comes into play.

A character’s background includes their current living circumstances when the story starts (financial state included), where they come from, what their backstory is, what their culture is, and everything else that ultimately determines who the character is in the beginning. All of these things can impact how they choose to look—or how they have to look, if it’s not up to them for whatever reason.

The ways that this sort of influence can show itself in a character’s design are pretty much limitless and, as I mentioned earlier, personality can play a big role in how it manifests. Like, if the character is a stickler for the rules and they’re required to follow a strict dress code—whether it’s for school, work, or other reasons—they’d likely be very careful to follow it. In contrast, if the character is a little more rebellious, they might either ignore it or find ways to add their own flair to their outfit, like by purposely wearing something wrong or throwing in some sort of accessory. (Much to their more careful friend’s dismay, of course.)

Another more obvious aspect of this is that genres like fantasy and sci-fi have very typical outfits. Sci-fi with the jumpsuits and power armor, fantasy with the more knight-like armor and robes, that sort of thing. Sometimes I like to come up with more original outfit ideas, but I generally try to keep the norm for whatever genre I’m writing in mind when I go about designing the clothing for my own story, as it can be great inspiration and can help me keep from straying too far from what audiences (and myself) would expect to visualize.

Diversity in the Group

This might seem like a strange thing to bring up in the character design post but, for me, it’s during the character design phase that I usually realize if all of the characters in the group are kind of…the same. Like, if they’re all a bunch of white ladies, or a bunch of elf dudes, or anything else that makes them all physically very similar. This isn’t always necessarily a problem, sure—if the story takes place in the magical realm of the elves where there literally is no one but elves there, then it might be acceptable—but, for me, I always prefer to have my main group be more diverse, with multiple different kinds of people involved. (Because life—and writing and drawing—is boring when everyone’s the same.)

Obviously, there are many things that can make the cast members different from each other that can’t always be expressed in just simple appearance—things like sexuality, religion, stuff like that—but there are also many things that can, like ethnicity, gender, and age. (Or species, if we’re talking about a fantasy or sci-fi universe where there might be members of the main cast who aren’t even human.) These are the types of differences I’m most concerned with when I’m designing a character that I know is going to be part of a larger group. 

I’ve always found it funner to draw characters that look very different from each other than it is to draw characters that look very similar. Diversity in the group makes both the story and the art more interesting.

Outro

Character design is one of those things that isn’t a crucial part of my process, but it’s always been one of my favorites because it’s one of the first steps to making my characters feel more real. It’s also probably the most laid back part, because it isn’t necessary for the story to function, which lets me just have fun with it.

That’s all for today’s post. Thank you for reading, and be sure to check back later this month for the next book recommendation!