GOOD vs BAD Character Design: Tips and Tricks!
Vložit
- čas přidán 4. 03. 2020
- Check out these other amazing Character Design videos!
Any-Mation : • Pete Docter | Geometry...
Joopis : • A GUIDE TO GOOD CHARAC...
Professional Industry Artists Brent Noll and Maximus Pauson break down Good Character Designs and Bad Character designs with the three fundamentals of clarity: Silhouette, Palette, and Exaggeration. What are you doing right and what are you doing wrong? Lots of tips and tricks for digital art and traditional art.
🔵Discord: / discord
👍🏻Patreon / bamanimation
------------------------------------
BaM is dedicated to teaching artists all about the animation industry, and skills sets including character design, background design, animation, and painting! Send us your art, and BaM will make an episode about YOU!
Email Bam.redrawmyart@gmail.com
If you want to have YOUR art redrawn!
✏We have a Website and Store now!✏
www.brentandmax.com/
Visit our Portfolios
/ portfolio-maximus
brentnoll.com/
Instagram
/ bam_animation - Krátké a kreslené filmy
![THE 5 WORST CHARACTER DESIGN TRENDS [in cartoons, movies + games]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/v4YXVXKkWjs/mqdefault.jpg)
I feel like people are kind of missing the point, saying that BaM's redesigns are uglier. BaM deliberately overexaggerated their designs to make their point clear. Sure, I preferred the original squid girl, but the point of the exercise wasn't to make her more appealing, it was to show how shape language changes a design. Of course in a real character design you could pull back on that, maybe include some more circular shapes to combine "friendly" and "speedy", but BaM was starting at level 1 and showing how *one shape* can exaggerate a design.
Ignore the grumbly comments, BaM. This video has been really helpful for me and I'm sure many other artists feel the same!
TBH Everyone have different ways or tips or tricks on How they make their character I guess
Then they probably shouldn't have said the new design was meant to be the improved version.
Still, advice was good.
Ah, manipulation at it's best.
Even at the end they say that they have no idea of what makes a good character design, telling us that there isn’t only one way to design a character or definitive way to
I understand. My art got criticized so much i stopped showing people. Though i am trying to start digital amination to show people they cant make me stop drawing because they dont like my style
"Red might feel dangerous and sexy."
Elmo: *hi*
Chaos Controlled
Elmo: “Elmo loves you! Hahaha!”
Some person: “Damn Elmo, you’re such a player 😳😏”
It's like the cursed photo meme.
elmo in hell = danger
elmo on bed= sexy
damn, that's accurate.
exactly
*draw Elmo holding a bloody knife behind you.*
*E-ELMO KUN*
"Triangles give off dangerous and edgy feelings"
Phineas: *MMMMMMMMMPH*
Ikr
He was a dorito boy
She said: 'Watcha Doin?'
czcams.com/video/aosWoTbEUmw/video.html
@@drawnwithlove3499 a....avril lavigne fan?
There will always be exceptions and this rule is no exception. Best to find the value in the generalizations.
I think its important to realize that this is a very HEAVILY STYILIZED art style. The points are good but you can bend them and take in the ones that will/can help you with YOUR own style. You don't have to change your style to fit this video or take every point extremely seriously. Also, some tips and tricks may not apply to you and your style. Thats okay. Remember! These are tips, not "you must do these things or else your art is terrible and your characters are terrible...etc etc"
thank you 🤦 too many butthurt ppl missing the point of the vid
@@NoName-ug3yw fr, coming back here and seeing more negative comments is eh, valid but i still enjoy the tips
True. There's was alot of valuable points in the video like their advice in making the character sheet like a roller coaster is great.
I'm having such a hard time designing bc my art style isn't so stylized but more semirealistic 😭
@cloudyangeltv SAME the character i'm drawing is supposed to look like he would blend in irl which means no crazy hair or shapes so this video isn't helping much. .
The character reveal at 4:10 was a sin to my eyes compared to the original drawing, it felt like I was staring into the sun.
LMAO 😂 "my eyes!!"
IKR?
They made her look like an angry old lady! But I think that was the point by using the shape. Maybe if they used a different shape then she would’ve looked better
they gave her the "plastic surgery gone wrong" look
@@inferno__boi... Fr
"Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety"
**Looks at Hulk*
he protects the city
@@lapiswolf2780 Exactly
@@lapiswolf2780 violently...
@@adaliawright6891 In the same way that *Godzilla* does! ^_^
Creeper
"Characters rarely stand in a bright white room"
Me: *laughs in traditional art sketchbook*
*cries in never uses colors*
It is so true
@@omgheather1 haha same :')
@@kyleag86 i thought i was the only one-- hi 😌♥️
also in gravity falls, which the onscreen characters are from, one of the most epic scenes takes place in a bright white room.
This video is a better example of why NOT to follow the rules all the time. You could follow all the rules and still end up with something that looks utterly bland or just weird.
Yeah, they completely ruined the character they redesigned at 2:50, not to mention that the dog princess resign just looks like a furry knock-off of Princess Peach
It's because they went too deep on the shape aspect of character design.
I feel like this is a more western stigma.
Most Anime characters have relatively normal proportions and are still wildly popular and recognizable by the masses.
@@professornova1236 I agree. One reason could be that since anime is character focused, the design principles they have are more about personality and details that tie in with current fashion trends or ongoing tropes within anime to express that personality.
I think this has to do with how animation in the U.S. has always been about that "illusion of life" through very defined acting in the animation with lot's of frames. This necessitated making simplier characters that move well.
In Japan it's the opposite, since they couldn't afford the workload of making thousands of frames. The solution was to make more complex characters that move with as few frames as possible. Because the acting couldn't carry the personality and appeal for the character, the character design had to carry that purpose along with high quality voice acting.
@@mangledfoxy2052 You clearly are very young or naive
All u guys know about is cute anime style. Everything that falls off the anime spectrum is bad or ugly. Please get a good taste
"This fan-submitted artwork is good but has a few problems that makes it look bad, so we will fix a few of those!"
*proceeds to change their entire personality, artstyle and shape*
Dam
I honestly think that's good.
I'm an artist myself and I would rather have a "Good job but this is horrible let's fix it together" than a "yeah it's cool." then nothing more.
We need criticism to improve don't we.
Edit: Coming back to this I realized how much this character was changed. The original design surely gave it a pleasing look, the new one does seem way too different. A way too strong change to the original charm the character gave.
@@oldchannelawhellnah yeah, but that doesn't mean one must mutilate your characters to appease some assholes online. The original fish girl was fine, they had no right to turn it into a cubist monstocity.,
@@themadoneplays7842 I mean yeah but if I'm not wrong that was just an example of how simple shapes can completely change a character, I'm not sure if they were actually suggesting these changes for the original design
@@oldchannelawhellnahThat's not a fix. It's a do-over. That's like if you went to the doctor with a broken arm and his solution was to amputate the arm and attach a prosthetic.
Red: dangerous and sexy
Mr Krabs - *Hey ladies~*
Lol
“WELL THESE CLAWS AINT JUST FOR ATTRACTING MATES!”
@@mittycommitspizzatime92 3 words my friend 3 words
"Plankton and mr krab hardcore coop Cock and Ball Torture (parachute, ball stretcher, kickings, hot)"
Scarlet Witch: Hi
are u feeling it now mr krabs
"while red might feel dangerous and sexy"
* Looks at Po from teletubbies *
* Po from teletubbies looks back at you and nods *
*wiggles eyebrows*
He's dangerous tho
@@smileyfacegr6691 po is a girl
@@franciscop.garcia9931 Woops! 😫
Also, why did I say _he_ when I meant _they_ ? I never wandered if the teletubbies had genders or not 😶
So what I learned from this is
1. Put a bunch of shapes together to make a silhouette
2. Make sure the silhouette has defined features to make it stand out
3. Color contrast is important on both the characters and the characters with the background
3. Make it somewhat simplistic but not too much
4. Exaggerate poses but again not too much
5. All kinds of body types are good
6. Draw more shapes to make more interesting characters
7. Draw line ups (with variety)
8. Use references
9. Also good palettes
10. Story is important when going with different styles
just keep in mind that they overexagurated shape language in this video to properly show it, You dont need to be a bunch of triangles smashed togheter. A good example of shape language is the wolf from Puss in boots the last wish. He has alot of triangles in his design without being over the top. Mostly, your design should have shapes, but not be made of shapes, if that makes sense
The odd one is out: Ya sure?
2:48 conflates clarity of pose in silhouette with clarity of character in silhouette. There was nothing wrong with the character's silhouette before and was completely recognizable due to the tail, pointed arm bands, tentacles, and hat. I would wager that in a line up of silhouetted characters, she'd be distinct as is.
the "fix" makes her pose more clear, but doesn't do much to define her character silhouette any more than before (and it makes her look a bit more alien, which slightly chipped away at her appeal). Her pose is also pretty unnatural looking now, as an added "bonus".
And it's been mentioned in the comments plenty, but the "shape language" redesign completely butchered the appeal of the original design; so much so that I wouldn't call them the same character... if anything, it proved that combining shapes together can make a much more appealing character than dogmatically adhereing to a single shape.
Just look at a few of the examples givin leading up to that redesign: Sonic in composed of triangles, and circles, the old man from up is mostly square but has a round nose, Wreck it Raplh is overly square but has rounded edges and a round jaw, Aku has almost no triangles in his head and is comprised of rectangles and circles, Batman has triangle eyes, but is mostly boxy with his jaw and shoulders, spiderman in the example is much more round than angular. The shape language bit completely missed the nuance for a dogmatic rule of shapes when it comes to character design.
This entire video is kind of sloppy like that.
I agree. I want to believe they meant well, but any aspiring artist who takes this advice is probably going to end up in a worse spot for having done so.
Every character given looked good in their own right, and yes polish was needed but there was still appeal. After they showed the "improved version" each character felt derivative.
Cute dog princess becomes a princess Peach clone.
Fun pirate captain girl becomes ugly sea witch.
Smart lawyer and dumb demon become pretentious lawyer and ugly demon.
Seriously, everything just became so darn ugly for the most part.
I think they did make it clearer but her character was skewed and essence became something different.
Wow it’s almost like people see art differently than you, mind blowing I know.
The second design reads waaaay more clearly. The first character is made up of more round shapes, making her looking cuter and more approachable, but then her expression and attire read "bad guy." The second design is very clearly meant to be a dangerous villain and unapproachable. By removing the rounded shapes, there is a much more obvious direction for what the character is supposed to be.
@@Bobathan20 Wow it's almost like there is no bad art even though there are shit tons of them
"Let's take a look at bad character design."
Me: *questions every character I've ever drawn*
Fiddle Flixx I felt the same
Joseph O'Malley same
Fiddle Flixx same ;-;
*me looks at my DnD person*
:(
Mood
"Color tells the story"
Manga: *allow me to introduce myself*
allow me to intoduce you Nosferatu
Land of the lustrous, ah yes
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure:
let's get *Funky*
Yes
Let's turn that language on it's head
15:43 this geniunly made me gasp, I did'nt expect him draw that 🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
IKR LIKE WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?
SAME LIKE WTF
Felt so pointless and inappropriate in a video that was mostly if not entirely family friendly the whole way through
@@Daboypurplhart “Gotcha!”
"triangles give off dangerous and edgy feelings."
the play button: e d g y n o i s es
bill cipher: my time has come
I feel like every polygon is edgy but thatsjustmeidunnoman
what about phinease? from phinease and ferb.
AAAH DORITO SCARY
My mind when I hear triangles: *Bill Cipher and Peridot*
"That's my art style-san"
Shots fired lol
Is this som kind of personal attak or somthing??
@Mather The only way to learn is to acknowledge the call-out and change
Sounds like it is a slap to the face SPECIALLY dedicated to weebs
Lol
@Mather If you are never constructively critisized in your art, how will you see your mistakes?
15:44 THE WAY MY JAW DROPPED AFTER SUCH A FAMILY FRIENDLY VIDEO
The dog princess redesign was a little bit TOO exaggerated, they changed totally the concept of what it was, changing completely the colours and remove the cape it had. Yes the colors were kind of exaggerated but they were completely changed instead of keeping the palette as similar as possible
exactly and the colours were meant to be like that on the original one and the colours don't look bad either
i love how you worry about the dog princess when this monstrosity of the fish lady redesign exists
I agree. The red cape and less round design gave the princess the vibes of a kind girl who was born into a monarchy but has medieval/Victorian gender standards forced on her. The redesign was almost too friendly and feminine with her round shapes and lack of cape.
My guess on her personality eas confirmed when they showed the art of her gardening. She was wearing her nice dress while kneeling in the dirt and shoveling. That told an entire story from that one picture alone. In the new design, the shovel implied a similar story, but her actions spoke louder than her design and i couldn't tell if she was kneeling in dirt because she is so round.
The color values on the redesign were indeed better though imo
You guys need to read the pinned comment
"Check your backgrounds, characters don't normally stand in a white room"
My characters: *laughs in asylum*
LOL XD
My characters: *drinking coffee in a staff room in hell* "hm?"
Honestly I have a some characters that are just black and white, honestly idk how I’ll make a sillhouette of it
what about Pocoyo..
@ISABELLA ABALOS let's sent u a letter, to come back home to play
8:26 yes Elmo comes across as dangerous and sexy
His old voice actor especially...OOF.
I don't know about you but I find Elmo to be quite *Menacing*
E. Norma Stitz lol you HAD to say it 😂🤣😅
Don’t he though?
@@erfanthered9801 He knows were you live
Character design is very subjective! That's so important to remember when designing.
“Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety”
*shows kermit and shrek on screen*
LOL
Well who's even scared of those two?
Shrek is daddy 😫
"Is your character feminine, or masculine?"
Araki: Yes.
BlueberryBoy 11 Araki: Not sure but watch them p o s e
koichi pose
Your next line will be:"iS ThAt A JOjO ReFErEnCe?"
I THOUGHT THE SAME THING HAHA
@Social Life w-we a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-also don't t-t-talk like th-this in r-real life
“Characters rarely stand in a bright white room”
Manga artist: _Yeah, about that..._
why do you think they say "rarely"?
Yeah but mangas aren’t colored oof
that's why sometime they have to give the character an aura when standing in a detailed setting, so the characters won't get consumed by the background
They use value
@@uhgooditskay5429 and why do you think they say RARELY? lmao
I feel like the redesign of the demon and human lost the whole idea of its comedic value. The original had the demon looked surprised while the human looks to the demon with a smug look as if the human managed to fool the demon. Now have the demon just focused on looking at his scroll while the human focuses on reading out loud from his book and it generates a sense of seriousness, which isn't bad at all. However, it takes away the comedic personality the original was trying to convey and plus the comedic value from the original focuses on the facial expressions, thus a full body wouldn't really be necessary. (Yes, I saw a comment that mentioned about this and I fully agreed.)
However, I felt the idea of exaggerating the body shapes of both the human and demon does help improve the drawing in some aspects. A very nice contrast between the two, nonetheless.
4:13 I don't like that rework despite it has a more recognizable shape. It messes up the one important thing - the style changed a lot through the rework and it feels too different. The goal was to rework the shape, not to create a completely different character to match perfectly the "shapes" principle. Maybe the creator wanted to create something more diverse than a triangle tower
I can really agree with this and I couldn’t scroll through the comments any more when I saw this one, I can’t really see the improvement put just a different character I wouldn’t be to easily recognize if they were to be the same, Because something else that disturbs me is that they changed too much, the lips are different they took away the cool tattoos, the outfit is different and the mask as well, u really likes the design of the owl-like mask in the original, and I would prefer to stay with the first one.
I honestly think the original design looks more interesting and memorable (no offense to the animators who redesign it)
by far the biggest fallacy from this video.
"thanks, next!"
the redesigners arent saying "change this to ur artstyke" they are making a very exxadrated from so the og creator can take bits and peaces plus they submitted it to this channel so they obviously wants to make it more like their art
I honestly agree. While the design has an early read of danger. They took away some of the iconic look of og character like pacific tribal like design mixed with pirate sea creature. I'm looking at the tattoos l, the mask, the rug like outfit. It's all gone in the final redesign. While simple and easy read. That character is still forgettable cause of the oversimplification the personality of the character in their design. I agree with they said but I think it's over simplified the character and took away the style.
"Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety"
Ah yes shrek makes me feel very safe
to be fair
he DOES actually make me feel safe
i'm being completely unironic here
He feels safe in his green swamp maybe?? 😂
@@ponponpatapon9670 honestly you're a legend for saying that
Mad respect bro
But of course Shrek makes you feel safe. Shrek is love. Shrek is life.
*Shrek is love Shrek is life flashbacks*
"...and that doesn't mean just browsing through Pinterest"
this is a callout
Tbh I feel attacked
You know what's funny ? My art teacher used to tell us to go on Pinterest every single time we attended her classes. She never taught us anything.
@@ArpeggioPegasusMusic Just further presses the point that school is kind of pointless when there are those teachers who don't really teach anything in class themselves, instead only relying on textbooks or website for referencing the course curriculum. It all just matters only the discipline of the students who care to go to research beyond what's taught in the class.
Actually, Pinterest can be an amazing source of, not only art, but art advice. I find content just like the stuff in this video, and I find a lot of artists who show off their character design exercises, that have been drawn with a proper character design formula- really inspiring.
But the thing is, you have to scratch the surface of art Pinterest if you really want to find the 'better' stuff. One click on an anime girl in cute clothes and it's all you'll see, unless you search for the other stuff.
Your right? Huh~
I think the design changes completely changed the feel of the characters.
Ok I just figured this out. The creators of this channel work in the television industry, so their “fixes” make sense for television but not entirely for the creator.
Even in television. I mean if the character completely misinterprets what the creator was going for to the audience that just is counterproductive.
As an Eastern artist, I find Eastern and Western take different approach when it comes to animation. Eastern character design can be unanimous in body shapes(as you mentioned here), but they shine through exaggerated movement and animation. Western character designs are very shape oriented. So they have so many exciting wacky shapes, but when it comes to actual animation, they are really boring to look at with little exaggeration and depth to their movement. I think it boils down to how easier it is to figure out movements of a character that is unanimous or akin to average human body than super exaggerated stylized characters.
Both do have their outliers tho. Like One Piece's exaggerated designs and Old Disney's magnificent and fluid animation.
I agree.
"red gives you dangerous and sexy"
me: if red is sexy, than why is shrek _green?_
Wyntryx 😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐 I won’t say anything about your personal fetish
😂
K-arooni Seruce its a joke theres no way..
@@k-arooniseruce3140 people don't actually think shrek is sexy bro. It's a meme. We still love shrek though
Cause he lives
in
a
frickin
Swamp
“Or extroverted” *proceeds to show picture of jesus*
Brazil being extroveted actually makes sense
**proceeds to show picture of Jesus T-posing*
@@vixenkarma5670, Why of course he's T-Posing given Jesus's overpowered dominance!
Jesus is as most extroverted as you can get
*Face palms*
The problem is, you use an extremely cartoony, almost non-humanoid artstyle. These principles almost only work with very cartoony drawings, and taking most of the details doesn't make it more recognizable and it makes its palette smaller.
2:48 honestly, this design is by far my favourite in the video.
On the other hand, 4:11, this one is defintiely one of the worst in my opinion.
As someone who's just getting into art, if I saw my design mutilated like that fish lady, it would definitely be a huge blow to me wanting to pursue art as a hobby.
It made me feel so sorry that I actually want to find the artist and comfort them.
Yeah honestly they just changed the entire feel of the character and also why did they give her such giant lips ?? Not saying big lips are bad but she didn't have them in the first drawing and adding them idk it cimsoxneo
@@insertunoroginalnamehere6189 She went from someone who you'd hang out with at a tavern and plounder some booty to that one primary school teacher who should really retire.
@@Damian-03x3 u just continue spitting facts like seriously and so many other people agree
@@insertunoroginalnamehere6189 mans got the gulp-gulp 3000
So you just have to know how to tell what you want to portray through your character design. If people don't see your character's story as you want to then you failed.
Red = dangerous and sexy
Red tetris piece: oh yeah
please stop you are scaring me
Fingy Stingy this comment is cursed
Oh no it’s the square cool aids man
Kool aid Man be like
I recently downloaded Tetris during this season of quarantine we're in. lol
“Red might feel dangerous and sexy”
Me: “sees a figure of lighting McQueen”
_I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE_
I was almost expecting you to say you think lightning mcqueen is sexy
What about Clifford 😳
Mr Krabs tho 👀
*K A C H O W*
__TOO LATE__
Designing a character doesn't mean morphing and changing the art style of the original character completely, the squid girl actually looked normal before being turned into a person who looked like they just got their 4th round of plastic surgery for the day.
“It’s just my style!” Says every 12 year old amateur artist
Fr they made her look like levi jed murphy
Yeah like I thought the drawing was really good but then they turned her into a bunch of triangles
@@MM-pv5tpwhen did they say that?
@@MM-pv5tp Yeah but that doesnt mean you have to turn every character into a cubist nightmare. It's fine to mix shapes when creating characters.
I saw the dog girl in the thumbnail and I was like "Oh, I guess they'll be fixing that design in the video!"
Imagine my disappointment when I watched the video and realized that WAS their redesign.
Shape language be like: the death star is your friend!
Ah yes the planet destroying sphere is my friend
HAHA XD
everyone, go hug an electrode!
This comment is sponsored by the Imperial propaganda division.
The Death Star ain’t a character tho
"Simple designs encourage the animators to have fun"
Hazbin Hotel animators: ._.
Hazbin Hotel's characters have so much potential! I think the just need to change up the silhouettes to fit the characters a bit better.
Not gonna lie, I can't stand looking at that animated pilot. Just something about Vivzie's animation style really gets under my skin, but I'm honestly not sure why. ._.
See gamers, this is why you shouldn’t over-detail your characters.
the style was always more for an illustration purpose rather than animation; Vivzie has always had experience animating detailed characters, sure, but she never learned how to effectively translate picture style into animation style. In the long run, adding a few pink spots and some stripes on a spider isn't very practical for the long run.
Lol I love that XD I don't think it takes anything away from the characters, I just think it doesn't add anything except the amount of time it'll take for the next episode to come out
I'm a multimedia arts student and this video is literally EVERYTHING we've been studying for the first few semesters. I genuinely reference some of their philosophies because this is how it's taught to us as well, and I guess BaM makes it easier for me to remember.
Art is genuinely subjective but I think the flak really comes from the idealism of Western animation lol. It's also important to note that these are character designs for animation. The redesigns are "improved" so that 1) it's easier to animate, 2) it's easier to advance the storyline, 3) it's easier to remember how to draw them when referenced.
Shape language doesn't only convey personality but it's technical that we can actually reference to them when in-betweening, storyboarding, all that.
4:17 I like the first one better
They really called out how the original lion king was better lol
This one? - - - > 15:43
@@plaguedoki27 my eyes...
@@plaguedoki27 yo.... why..
It was xD although the live action designs in that part was good it's just the emotion was gone do to the lack of expression.
@@bloodymoon7315 i disagree. there’s no personality in the live action designs. nothing to make them stand out. they all end up looking like the same character.
"Red might feel dangerous and sexy"
*Red Lego brick* : *plastic noises*
10/10 anal beads
Plastic noises LMAO
Something tells me there are a lot of these
Moists plastic
especially dangerous. especially
Something i discovered is how the GTA games managed to make the main characters recognisable with only using clothing. Like you can recognize cj by his white tank top and blue jeans, tommy with his tropical jacket and jeans, claude with his black jacket and green pants, niko and his tracksuit, ect.
Coming back to this video a few years after first watching it and wow, I regularly use more of the design advice from this 20 minute video than from an entire semester of animation class. *I'm not joking.*
Why would your animated character be a realistic human who lives on a regular house, when he can be a yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
That is what my teacher once said to me.
I loved this comment so much I read it at least three times.
simpsons?
@@Timsturbs *Yellow humans xD
That's a great point, you should make sure to repeat it to as many growing artists as you can!
Möhinder Pictures he lives on a pineapple? Interesting
I thought he lived inside a pineapple
"Go Outside"
Covid-19: No, No I don't think you will
@ISABELLA ABALOS I d o n t h a v e a b a c k y a r d. What shall I resort to
@@FinnValentineB ....a.....a balcony....?
@@FinnValentineB your roof
@@pokaay3163 well I think the people who live above me would be mad. But hey, I guess it'd be payback for how loud they always are
@@FinnValentineB WINDOW :D
"Is your character extroverted..."
*shows a pic of Jesus T-posing*
I feel like every damn art shouldn’t look like Cartoon Network
channel: *talks about layers, flipping the canvas etc.*
Me: *laughs in sketchbook*
I scrolled all the way down through the comments just to find someone who said this! I personally use tracing paper to amend this issue (not a 100% fix, but it can make things a lot more balanced when it's supposed to be), but I do all my art by hand rather than digitally, so I don't have the fancy techniques like photoshop, so when it gets down to the illustration portion of a design, I only have 1 chance to get the color down right, because there's no take backs afterwards 😅
Its always useful to use a mirror for this!
Put your sketch in front of a Mirror to check de proportions
@ ALL 3 OF YOU, LOL XD
I hold the paper up to a light and turn it around to see it flipped and it helps me catch lots of mistakes. You can also take a picture with your phone and flip that. And the mirror works, too, like Catalina said! I really like to scan works in progress also because then I CAN digitally reverse it, and it also allows me kind of save a backup of the lineart and stuff. If I REALLY botch the coloring phase, then I can throw that away, then trace my finished lines by loading the scanned lineart, putting a clean piece of paper up to my computer screen and then tracing over them to get them all back. Sure, I have to do the inking again, but at least I don't have to start all over if I ruin the coloring.
To an extent, you can do an extra layer even with traditional drawing if you have a computer or something else to use as a light table.
Congratulations! You got a various tips and tricks from artists up here! Cool tips you guys! 👌👌
Me: Laughs in MS Paint.
“Characters rarely stand in a bright white room”
CZcams animators: I’m about to end this men whole career
Lmao
Bruh,love ure two faced life
Yup i do that all the time :')
*I d o t h a t*
AS AN ANIMATOR THIS HAD ME CRYYYYING ✋🏻😂
I came back to this a while after I first saw it, and I still don't like the redesigns (of the squid captain and the dog princess especially). The advice is well meaning and shouldn't be disregarded just because they made some mistakes, but I'm not going to pretend I don't see a bad character redesign.
Lesson to be learned:
Everyone makes mistakes, even professionals. Make sure to learn from your mistakes.
I genuinely love how well they snuck in that one drawing around 15 mins in, to the point literally no one so far in comments have even considered that being something to laugh about 😂, all seriousness, as a upcoming artist and animator, these are very helpful tips, I had a similar idea but this really helped me open my mind to variety of how to start off and points I never thought of, so awesome, to anyone also viewing this, goodluck, we both have alot of stress to go through ;---; thanks for helping, thanks for readIng 🤣
i was just about to talk bout that to lol
I was looking for a comment talking about that furry art
yeah, i was thinking AINT NO WAY THEY JUST DREW LION NSFW
Nah it’s the most replayed part lol. Ppl just have a lot of criticism about the points made in the video that they’d rather talk about that over whatever the hell my eyes bore witness to
A great way to make your character look dangerous is to;
A. Make them out of triangles.
B. GIVE THEM A BIG ASS SWORD.
About B, *thinks about Cloud from FF7*
@jonevat 77 when I see him in smash I’m like “oh shit” so it’s accurate
Pyramid head.
Pyramid Head.
All i can think of is Lio fotia
15:44 imagine people on this zoo like:
oh, he is drawing the animals! thats so cool! what is this looking li- oh my god
Estevão Ucceli it’s call yiff...
Yiffinhell
I really hope there was no children in that zoo...
Limom3 yes there is. Only that the location was switched before it showed the drawing...
@@Eepop_stuffs that subreddit declined so much in quality so now it's just gone down to "haha furman bad".
Visit r/furry instead!
The shape thing is absolutely ridiculous. Like how exactly can you say "This is a good drawing, but it has more than 1 main shape, so it's bad. Let's fix it!"
2:51 congrats now her neck is 200 feet
“i’m never going to flip the canvas while i draw so everything will be awkwardly leaning to one side” i feel personally attacked
I mean, I never do it either and that's not something I ever seem to have an issue with. Usually, your characters are intentionally leaning to a side anyway.
Lmao and i *just* found out you can do that
I draw on paper, do I have to make a copy on the back or?
@@Rodrigo-br8qe i usually try to draw the frame of their body an of how i want them positioned and then follow that frame as closely as possible when fleshing them out
@@Rodrigo-br8qe For people that care to do it, they usually check with mirrors.
Aah, THAT’S why anime characters always have weird hair! It’s to compensate for the bland body shapes!
And why superheros have colourful and over the top outfits.
Rhaynebow Not just hair, but other design elements (facial, costume, and props most notably) are ways you can plus up a ‘meh’ human-proportioned design into a stellar one. One Piece’s Luffy & Hunter X Hunter’s Gon are good examples of that philosophy. (Luffy has a lean muscular build with messy short black hair & wears a long sleeved red cardigan, yellow sash, oversized blue trousers with cuffs & a round brim straw hat. Gon has long, spiky black green tipped hair and his usual outfit is composed of a oversized green jacket with red trim, white tank top, oversized green short shorts, and green laced boots.) The point being is you can apply the principles of good, readable character design to whatever it is you’re cooking up, and the principles of caricature & shape value can still be applied to designs with “conventional” human proportions. Keep the basics to heart, you know?
#NotAllAnime
Also with some genres of anime they go into chibi form where they literally have the same body, or even just an oval of their face pops into the screen to scream at something that's just been said, so the hair needs to be iconic to serve that purpose so when its only their floaty head in a speech bubble you still know it's them
I also noticed that detail some time ago. Unfortunately, since then I can't look at anime/manga-styled artwork without feeling of same-face-syndrome shoving into my brain.
I heard that in the past it was done intentionally so studios could reuse same shots, frames and designs for different animes (because of low budget) and over time it just became heavily fused with the genre itself. Not sure, if that true, it's just a random story.
This is one of my favorites methods
1. Try to think of an object or thing
2. Make it to a humanoid with some of the "thing" features
3. Add backstory and personality to them
4. Done and done
Ya know, I feel like instead of saying "we can improve this design" you should say "we can use this design as for demonstration"
I say this because first off it seems very insulting to make someone's art look like it came out of a crappy adult swim show, and them say you improved it, it's just plain wrong. Not only that, but art is subjective, saying you've improved anything when you just drastically changed everything the origonal artist made shows thst you don't understand what vibe they wanted, that first redesign with the triangles looks awful in comparison to the origonal work.
They totally fucking destroyed that first character god their version was terrifying
They somehow exaggerated the idea of shape language to the point of butchering a character, I don’t know how they thought it looked good ngl
@@tomemeornottomeme1864 well the point wasn't about it being good looking or not. Whether or not it's appealing is for another video, this was just showing how to make a character more recognizable, not making it look good. Though I agree they could've made it look better.
@@kaneda7368 no it was good and bad character design they were given the character to try making the character better and they ruined her
@@kaneda7368 The SINGLE MAIN goal of character design is to make it look good.
@@tomemeornottomeme1864 and the single main goal of that specific part in the video was to show how to make a character's silhouette stand out more.
Red: Dangerous and sexy
Kool-Aid Man: Ohh yeaah!
.......... WHAT
@Alejandro GAMEZ SIERRA and to be fair, hes sexy as FUCK
Well, I just wanted to mention kool aid man, but ok😂
My friends have a story involving him that makes him dangerous...
Yes, I found this comment! 😄👍🏽
Another idea for pallets: i recommend more of a calming and something calming to the eye instead of using a full hot/eye blining color pallets or colors that are way too soft.
I remember I designed a character for my DnD campaign and I showed the character to all my friends and all of them loved the design and character itself. it was my first attempt at designing a character in a long time so it was a very nice feeling!
He just turned the dog lady into princess peach
Lmao, ikr. She was literally in the mushroom kingdom
Bahahahaha
I liked the first design better
@@finnygnat respect the opinion but no
@@pussylover3000 ok
"Is your character feminine, or masculine?"
Araki: *y e s*
Stolen
Who?
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
@@hixy1794 who actually cares
Non binary ppl: confused screaming
While the points in this video were valuable, every design they did lost the character in character design. Everything felt bland and didn’t capture the feel the original artists were going for. Plus, in storytelling, it can be a lot more interesting when you can’t tell who’s good and who’s bad. Or even making all of them morally gray (like all my favorite stories)
This video ALWAYS helps to reinforce my love for character designing and it’s always good to remind myself of the things I should be keeping an eye on. Love you guys!!!
“We associate yellow with joy and happiness”
Hm yes DIO is very happy and joyful
I mean, he laughs often
@@hypnoskales7069 true
Colour theory seems to take less priority compared to character designs
Spongebob
i mean he did look like he took joy in making johnathan and jotaro's lives hell
"Animation can be more powerful than live action."
Disney: *I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that.*
EDIT: y'all need to calm down in the replies, this was literally just a joke about how Disney's recent movies have all been live action
@Max the point is that the live Disney movies today still suck even with the animations. It's not an animation movie if the movie isn't fully animated.
Yeah but its not supposed to be good, its supposed to make money
@@owlismyfavouritecolorflame2325 I agree. A movie must be good enough to attain successful revenue. If the movie sucked, it will have terrible revenue.
@@tvoovm7254 maybe its sarcasm but its not what i said, what i said is the aladdin remake made 500 million dollars, basically disney has a stupid amount of cashcows and as long as pretentious critics and stupid children who may or may hot be pretentious buy tiquests, we will get more
Also avatar
1k likes but only 5 replies
Thanks for the whiplash at 15:44 LMAO helpful video!
I found this video accidentally but it is something I need as a boost for my art just to figure out what I want from my artwork. Thank you so much for this.
7:44
Mario, Luigi, Toad
and GIORNO GIOVANNA
Bum bum, badada da da da da da daa, daa, dadada da da da, da da bum bum, badada da da da da daa, daa, dada da da da da da da bum.
@Patata Chif BADA DA DA DA DA DA DA A
@@thegnarledpirate9198 GIO GIO da da da da da da da da GOLDEN WIND, da da da da daa daa daaa daaa da
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought it was Giorno. it didn't even register that it could be Peach at all.
WRRRRRYYYYYYYY
Triangle: Edgness, danger, intensity
Show's Bill Cypher whose literal character design is a corn chip XD
Ikr XD
I think that corn chips feel pretty dangerous when they stab the roof of my mouth when I bite into them
Crevettola even worse when it gets stuck in your gums
#verifyvenuz
Do you mean Razzle Dazzle Dorito?
out of all the art tip character design videos, I learned the most from this one. thank you for sharing your skills and knowledge to us noobs
original character design at 2:50 : wonderful art style, like the original Sly Cooper games (angular, poppy, bright, creative), has a distinctive shape and silhouette, and could use some work in some places, though not entirely bad
redesign: 60 pound liposuctioned donut lips villain with cheekbones stronger than the hulk and bigger than the bogdanoff brothers'. gotta have that feminine broken pelvis hip pop. looks like a candidate for a full body breakdown at r/botchedsurgeries. Took everything actually characteristic about the character and just gave up on it and tossed it in the trash
Yeah, I don't know how they saw that and thought "Yup, that looks good" because seriously, you can use all the shape language in the world but it ain't gonna be worth anything if no one wants to look at it because it's ugly
them: go outside to gather reference!
People in quarantine: hm.
*_hm._*
I’d like, but you have 69 likes.
*I hadn't considered that*
TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWOOOOOOO
that line aged *horridly*
While this is good, I feel as if some of the redesigns missed the points of the intent of the original designs and cared more about making it marketable and not making it have actual fleshed out meaning
Well that's kinda what they're going for. They aren't really giving tips on how to make good original characters, they're giving tips on how to make characters that stand out, characters that are easily identifiable from the silhouette, characters that use specific shape language. But not of those are really all that important if you aren't intending for your character to be an icon, if your character looks good, like the first OC pirate chick, it doesn't need to follow any of the rules as strictly as they act as that just completely changes or removes the personality of the character.
Dude that's literally the point of the channel.
Ladies and gents, the point
@@SugarHue "not making it have actual fleshed out meaning
" is the point? Then why would i watch this channel
@@Xecution099 they're not here to tell you how to make your characters, they're here to tell you the rules of icon. They're solid rules to make iconic characters, but if you don't want to market characters then you can break these rules.
The redrawings in this video were kinda aiming for generic.
Hey guys, not an artist here but your videos are still so interesting. I had no idea there was all this theory behind "good" art. I just thought it was a good picture.
So informative. Keep the humour, it's working well. I'll keep watching!
this video started my journey of character design, i may not do everything like this video tells me but it made me look closer on the world around me
"Animation can be more powerful than Live Action"
Oh yeahh Disney Must Learn from this guy, so they can stop doing that damned Reboot.
Too bad the rat's brain is rotten and only serves to be the slave of China
You know, something about this video always bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what. Now I know: you’ve left out the most important part of character design: the purpose. This video really only focuses on the appearance or style of a character design without considering who the character is or what their purpose is. At the beginning you list important things for a character design: silhouette, palette, and exaggeration. And yet you don’t even talk about intention or personality or character. In the redesigns, it seems your only concern is on the technical and the theory, and you just throw out the character, purpose, and soul. For god’s sake, a femme fatale is meant to be dangerously sexy, not just dangerous! It’s like no consideration was put into the actual communication of concepts and ideas and everything was just theory. You took the character out of the character designs!
Well said
Yes! Thank you!
thank you! this is true!
I completely agree with you, but I don’t think the video is bad by any means. Any person who learns from this video and ends up being a good artist because of it will also know about what your comment pointed out. Art is a skill that in part develops with the person that makes it. To oversimplify things, imagine it like a video game where you can level a character’s stats. In order to learn how to use a knife in the kitchen to properly cut ingredients, you need to level up things like hand-eye coordination, patience, observation. Obviously this sort of thing isn’t something you can numerically measure I’m just giving a crude example because it’s the same for art. And art is unique because there isn’t a specific stat level up requirement, multiple different kinds of combinations of stats will help you make art, the difference being is that the kind of art you make will be different. That’s how styles are born, and they even touch on this in the video itself. Grave of the Fireflies’s story would be a horrible fit in South Park’s art style if your goal is to deeply emotionally resonate with the audience, because otherwise you just insulted the tragic history of another nation which, to be fair, South Park is notorious for being very crude and offensive so no new lines have been broken here haha. They definitely could have presented the re-designs in a different light though, since the title and wording within the video passively implies that the re-designs are objectively better based on a guideline forged from observations of other good character designs. Your takeaway from the video shouldn’t be the improved designs, it should be “there isn’t a rule for what makes a design good or bad, it depends on the story you want to tell and the style you want to tell it in, here are some common similarities between good character designs, make of it what you will”.
This. Absolutely this.
This video bugged me a lot when i first saw it, and this comment made me realize why. The designs seem to loose all personality/change it completely.
For example in the dog princess one, the character went from being a seemingly impressionable and positive princess, to being another generic cheery princess.
8:25 "red might feel dangerous and sexy"
Red waddle dee:
Ik it doesn't apply to all but I still find it hilarious
this helps me in my everyday sketching for my characters. Especially the 3 tips: shadow, color palette, and shape language
15:44 simultaneously the best joke this channel has ever made, and the worst, since I was planning to show this video to my art teacher. Not anymore, lol.
You poor soul. You probably could have stopped at around the 14 minute mark since the point was already sold
OoPs
Our animation teacher showed us this video when we started learning about Character creation, we all laughed when that appeared
@Diego Haro your animation teacher must be really cool then xd
One of the two animation teachers we have looks like he is in his 20's when actually he's almost 40 xD
Fak i was gonna send this to My freakin family
Any video that shames the Lion King remake gets a like from me.
And Kylo's failed attempt at fanservice.
@@notquitehuman5097 they did Adam Driver dirty in the star wars.
All kinds of lion king sucks.
@@ExcuseMyWeebRudeness tell that to the people who cried their ass off at Mufasa's death
@@ExcuseMyWeebRudeness *_jazz music stops_*
I checked my character design with this “test” and the fact that I don’t use much yellow and pink and it’s mostly that purpleish blue really made me happy and my big swooped cyclops hair, very recognizable in silhouette this helped a lot TY💜
The swatch tests at @7:45 gave me life! This would be a great guessing game. So many great principles here!
And I can see how some redesigns changed the original feel of the OG character. This is why it's important for many people with different subconscious ideas to be involved in animation. I also feel that many of us are so much more familiar now with video game design nowadays (which leaves room for OG designs). The redesigned characters also have revamped settings. These were done to illustrate what COULD not what SHOULD be done in animation, and that's what I took away.
This is good advice but on the verge of single-mindedness. A good character design is one that succeeds at its purpose.
I’m so glad someone said it!
They literaly said that in the beggining of the video-- it varies from person to person
Totally agree as well. Art styles heavily veering on realism that also use lots of extra details as they’re going to be 3D animated wouldn’t benefit much from this advice. (Not my style but similar.)
Yeah
@@cherry6255 these tips can be translated to a realistic style;
facial structure, body type, hair, clothing, etc, can be influenced by shape language. The color pallet tips can be shown through clothing, skin color, eye color, and hair color. Etc etc etc, posture, body language, whatever you can think of.
10:57
Here we have Jesus t-posing to show his dominance over a bronze child
Shut up Mista
44 likes *Mista*
Yes
Teus
This is cursed
Very insightful. Thank you guys. I've been drawing since I could pick up a pencil and I love creating characters. I have multiple stories in the works that I've chosen to do in graphic novel format. Watching you guys has improved my characters' designs exponentially. you guys are great...
Ive always wondered why I connected to cartoon characters FAR FAR more than live action characters. This video explained it! I rarely watch live action shows because I watch shows mostly to connect with characters and watch them as they go through their story.
And honestly after watching this video, all the cartoons I watch have the shape designs and I never noticed it before! That's so cool, this video is so helpful ❤
Them: "Like how red might mean dangerous and sexy,"
Me: Clifford no!
I mean clifford is huge right? He could just squish anything thats smaller than him, including humans
Aries Clarisse I thought you were gonna go into a totally different direction with “he’s huge”
Red is also a warm color, which fits Clifford’s personality (a big friendly dog)
Clifford yes
@@isabeanie81 You've seen the dark side of the internet lol
I disagree with 2:13, a characters personality or role doesn't need to be on their sleeve. Just look at fosthers home for imaginary friends. You got humble looking blue, but he has a massive personality. You also got edward, who looks like a mean evil being, but is really a crybaby. Character and looks don't need to be directly connected.
I agree with you, except I think what the guys who did the video actually did wrong was leave out a piece of information that should have been in the sentence.
I think they should have said "Everything about that character [THAT YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SEE IN THEM] should be understood visually, in one second or less."
That would cover all the subversion, too, and a lot of other things that got kinda left out but I'm sure they knew.
I would presume that the personality gives the character a desire to dress in a certain manner, his own "perfect" outfit in his mind that is supposed to represent what he wants to be. Now this can be compromised however depending on how unlucky the character's environment cat get, on how much he is prevented from getting that "perfect" outfit and what he's forced to wear instead. You can even go as far as giving him the outfit he desires, but he just happens not to fit in very well, or even look awkward in it, but he probably wouldn't care.
I agree ^^
Its appealing to do it both ways. In the classic Disney movies, you can tell almost right away what side a character is on and what their personality is. In Disney's Pixar films, the bad guy is often presented as someone the main character trusts, so its an intresting surprise when the character gets exposed.
I feel like this kind of contrast makes a character even more interesting!
i love coming back to this video. even though i've watched it too many times to count, it's always a good refresher and it's very entertaining. thank you BaM~
6:05
Hmm, yes
Let me just add a new layer to my sketchbook real quick so I can analyze the value of my colors