So, you already have a character, but you’d like to know how to make a good character design. How to make an iconic character design?
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Well, that’s fairly simple, as it was. So, let’s get into it.
To make a good character design, you need to make a character design that tells us as much as possible about the character with just the physical appearance of the character, their movements, and their speech.
A great character design is one that tells us as much as possible about the character with as little as possible. It tells us about their profession, their story arc (motivation/backstory), and their place in the story.
Things that are used to tell us these things are the character’s silhouette, their color scheme, their clothes, physical appearance (scars, childlike features, peculiar body parts, the size of their body, familiar body parts), instruments (peculiar weapons that they hold, things their carry, accessories they wear), body language (fluidity of their movements, or careful and guarded) and finally, speech (word choice, voice inflection etc).
Now, let’s get into deeper details about what this all means, and also the step by step process you can follow to write your own character design.
What Makes A Good Character Design?
A great character design is a character design that tells the viewers the character’s backstory, personality, and possibly future from just little information like physical appearance, speech, and body language.
A character is an a tempt to project a physical manifestation of an idea.
It sounds weird but its fairly easy. Basically what would happen if a teenage boy were beaten by a spider that gave him spider qualities? Or what would happen if a weak sickly child found out he was a descendant of an intergalactic spy? etc.
This idea is what the character is built from.
Their flaw, the character development, and as a consequence, their backstory comes from this idea. A teenage boy with powers will become insecure in his strength, and have to choose between using his strength for selfishness, or to make the world better.
Also, you can add more weight to their decision to do good by giving them a backstory that emphasizes their insecurity, powerlessness, or lack. So you’d say he has no parents, grows up in a public school, is constantly bullied at school, and he is just… a sad joke, really.
See how this goes?
Character is an idea. An idea can then be used to develop the character, and a motivation. Then what makes a good character design? Physical markers that we see and hear from the character which tell us of their peculiar development; present, past, and future.
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The degrees of character design
There are degrees to character design. Proper, good and great. A proper character design is one that tells us about who the character is.
A boy wearing baggy clothes is skinny, showing he is sick or something (Clothes).
Physically he may have eye bags, and knobby knees (Physical Appearance). He may use an instrument like a stick or drip stand to walk. Maybe even wheelchair (Instruments). With body language, he may tend to move slowly and avoid excessive energy use (Body Language).
Thus with speech, he may speak carefully to avoid inciting anyone (Speech).
Good character design takes it a step further, and tells us their backstory, their profession, the world they live in and even their personality type. Perhaps they wear a school uniform, and a pistol, showing us they are a rougher character living in a rough world, since this world has a child with a pistol.
Finally, great character design tells us about the world the character lives in, and more importantly, the central flaw that our character has to face. As a consequence, it may even hint at how the story will end, and what the character does.
If anything makes no sense now, don’t worry. It is about to make sense soon enough.
How Do I Start My Character Design?
1. Understand Your Message
To start of your character design, you need to first understand what the central question your story is trying to answer is.
Obviously, if your character is a physical manifestation of an idea, then you need to know that idea. There are a number of ways of discovering your central idea of a character, but the best way to solidify it is to use the Investigative formula:
What would happen if X was Z then B happens?
There are three main places that tend to inspire me when using this formula. The flaw, the unique abilities, and the unique station.
The Flaw
So with the flaw, you just ask what would happen if a character had a specific flaw.
What would happen if a man who fears spiders has his son kidnapped by a giant spider? And what would happen if a car accident trauma victim had to enter a driving competition? What would happen if a selfish man had to be Santa for a day?
So you see, you get an inspiration about a specific flaw (the adjective of the first half) and then place it in its natural problematic state (the second part of the question).
The Unique Abilities
This one makes the first half something that has to do with unique skills, or lack thereof.
What would happen if a boy who can’t swim became a pirate? And what would happen if a boy learned to spit fire in his chemistry class? What would happen if a girl started changing the weather every time she sleeps? etc
The Unique Station
This one focus on unique positions in societies that people could find themselves in.
What would happen if a peasant started living in a lord’s house? And what would happen if a rich man has to start living in a farm? What would happen if a girl was raised in a neighborhood that hates her racial kind? etc
2. Research Your Audience
Then, you need to understand the demographic of your core message.
When you understand the central conflict, then you get the flaw, then you finally develop the character, you will know who the message can appeal too. Usually it is someone around the same age of the character.
The point of this is that if you characters are younger, there is no need to get too deep into symbolisms with their design.
In fact, it is better to use broad stereotypes that a young mind will easily remember. A big burly man as being aggressive. A glass wearing girl as being dorky. But make sure to add a unique spin to it, so they don’t have to prejudiced a mind it we can help it.
If you do decide to be deep with your character design, it would help to add it on top of a simply design. This way the younger readers will enjoy your worker and the design, but when they grow older, they will look at it again, and be even more amazed. Which is always cool.
3. Clothes For Your Character Design
The first concrete detail you’ll need for a great character design is clothes that tell us about the reader.
Clothes show us a character’s profession, class, religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, and even more, personality traits (Maybe they do not tie their shoelaces, showing they are careless. Or they don’t wear the sleeves of a jacket, showing they are cool and relaxed etc). Great clothes design even tell us about the character’s flaw, and their triumph of it.
For proper level of design, the clothes need to tell us basic things.
Who the character is, what is their status, and what are their problems. Things like threadbare clothes, may show financial issues, or depression. And other things like wearing dark colored clothes may show depression, and a desire to not be seen.
Good character design clothes will tell us about the world.
They will tell us the character’s profession, their class, religious beliefs, and culture. Also, having the character wear the clothes in unique ways could be used to foreshadow future events. For example, maybe they always roll up their sleeves.
This then helps them in the future avoiding catching something, or assists them to catch something else. All up to you.
Great character design is when the clothes of the character tell us about the character’s flaw, and as a result, they show us the character’s progression level through the story.
A simple example is Luke wearing white in the first movie, grey in the second, and black in the last movie, showing progress from innocent to mature. My favorite is Yami Yugi’s chain. He wears the chain around his neck, showing that Yugi is bound by the pharaoh inside him.
4. Physical Appearance
The second thing that will make great character design is when you character has a telling physical appearance.
The physical appearance is basically what the character looks like naked. So, it is fairly easy to do.
For proper physical appearance design, you just need to write traits that are indicative of their unique self. Things like height, weight, physical attractiveness. Height affects people’s personalities, so does weight, and general attractiveness.
So looking at your characters flaws, what type of physical appearance traits would add to those.
Try not to make your social outcast men tall, athletic, and handsome.
For good character design, it tells us about the character’s world. So, this is where you think of hw the society intersects with your character’s flaws and development. Basically, if you decided your character was attractive, consider what would be found attractive in that society.
Consider how everyone looks in that society. Or maybe in that characters family.
These can tell us a lot about the world. For example if your character is insecure, this could tell us a lot about the world if their race seems to make matters worse. Also, if their race seems to not play any part, it tells us about the world too.
Also, if the character is attractive yet they have seemingly unattractive traits in modern day times. e.g. they are pudgy. It tells us about that world’s ideas on attractiveness.
Finally, your character’s physical appearance can tell us about their past. Here, I am referring to things like scars, or tattoos.
For great character design, the character’s physical appearance tells us about their flaw and future. This could be some sort of deformity, or unique scar. Or maybe they can just do stuff with their body which will be useful in defeating the main villain in the end.
5. Instruments
Another great thing you can do with character design is use proper instruments.
The instruments a character uses tells us most about their profession, and abilities.
But they can also tell us about their personality, and competence level. Obviously, they tell of the flaws the character has, and the climax of the story.
For proper design, their instruments tell us of the characters occupations, professional and personal. So a character may paint for fun, but they are also a gun slinger. This means they would carry a paint brush, and a gun.
For good design, the instruments need to tell us about the world.
Odd technologies a character uses can tell us if the world is medieval, prehistorical or futuristic. Even more, they can tell us about the character’s place in the world. If their instruments are worn out, it could be an indication of constant use, showing competency.
Also, it can show us their personality type, or station.
For great character design, the character’s instruments tell us about the character’s flaw and how they will fix the story. Maybe they carry an uncharacteristically big sword to symbolize the burden of their family name they bare, and must learn to use efficiently.
6. Body Language
A great way of creating character design is through the use of body language.
Apparently, up to 70% of human communication is experienced through body language. It would assist then for you to make sure your character’s body language communicates what needs to be said.
A proper body language design sees the character moving in a way that shows us who they are. This is the basic things like a character who averts eye contact showing they are shy. or one who throws they shoulders back showing their confidence.
A good body language design tells us about the character, and the world they live in.
Also, their place in the world. Captain Jack Sparrow walks strange on land because he is always on the ship, for example. This tells us the world is a pirate oceanic world, and this guys place in it is as a pirate.
So look at what your character’s profession is and find ways in which they would move due to that profession.
Finally, great body language tells us what the character will have to do to change.
One of the things that changes with character progression is the character’s body language. If they are shy, they will look down, and by the end of the story, when they are more confident, they will hold better eye contact.
Arrogant characters take up space when they sit, and always invade other’s space.
When they lose their arrogance, they may learn to respect other’s space, sometimes still violate people’s space, but in tender ways (think of hugs, or shoulder pats).
7. Word Choices
Finally, the character’s speech patterns will be another method for great character design.
A character’s speech methods tells us about the character’s temperament, backstory, and class in society. It has the added benefit of telling us their nationality.
For proper character speech design, it should tell us who the character is. This focuses on inherent personality traits, like openness, or introversion. If they are more open they are louder. If they are more intelligent they use bigger words more casually.
For good character design, speech will tell us about the character’s world and their place in it. They may use words that show us their nationality, their religion, their status, and maybe they could have an accent that the people find fascinating in the world.
For great character speech design, the character’s speech hint at the character’s progression.
It tells us what they wish to become in the future, their current flaws, and what they have to do to overcome it. This one is usually a series of one liners the character always repeats. I still have yet to read a writer who does this better than Joe Abercrombie.
Logen Ninefingers, my favorite character in the First Law Trilogy, has a 2 sayings he always says, “A man can change” and “You gotta be realistic about these things”. Also, there is that thing he says where he goes, “I’m still alive.” I don’t know why I added in the last one, but the first two serve a point I swear! You see, Logen’s character arc is a redemption arc (“a man can change”), yet there is a high likelihood he may fail his redemption (“You gotta be realistic about these things.”)
So make one liners for your characters that tell us about who they are as a person.
8. Use Silhouette For Your Character Design
You could use your character’s silhouette to try and say as much as possible through the character’s outline.
Now that you’ve built your character up, try to just make a silhouette of them.
Their clothes, instruments, and physical appearance should be enough to tell you a lot about who the character is. The reason for this is that we humans associate certain qualities to certain shapes. Circle is trustworthy and bubbly.
Square is sturdy, and strong. And triangle is harsh. Try to make your outline of the character reflect this.
If you are not into cartoonish characters, then you can still use this to tell us about a character. Make the characters big for intimidation. You can make them small to show weakness, and powerlessness.
You can make them anyway as long as it shows a certain image from a single glance.
9. Use Color Coding For Your Character Design
Use color codding hack.
Every color has an emotion we link it too. Try to give your character a color scheme that you want your readers to feel when they see the characters.
Do all these steps and master them, then you will have started on your journey to mastering mastery.