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Character Development
This might be a long shot, but I was wondering if anyone on here had any good ideas, exercises, and or resources on character development. This could concern design alone but, I'm also curious about fleshing out a character's personality. Is there a way to organize this? Or is it something people can just maintain in their head and just KNOW how a character would act in any given situation? As far as the physical design goes, I remember a long time ago Mr. Lafferty, you did a daily on character design where you discussed drawing the character on what I would call a grid format from 3 different angles. I was wondering if you'd developed any new techniques to help since then. As well as, if you had any advice from when you were developing Emma for your comic, or others, that I could learn from I would greatly appreciate it.




There are many different ways to characters, but I usually try to find inspiration from stories (novels, mythology, movies, comics...etc). Good characters have a distinct purpose and something that makes them iconic. Think of mickey mouse, his shape is very iconic (easily recognizable). A personality, sometimes the character will speak to you when you are sketching and sometimes you just have to give it one. You just have to start drawing, thinking, and brainstorm and the character will come. The character is not always immediate in your imagination. Creativity is usually sparked from inspiration.
Thank you very much!
When fleshing out a character, I have a personlity / basic physical features list that I go through like: What's their eye color, hair, nose shape like? What are their likes and dislikes? What's their favorite food or place and if there's a reason? What are their hobbies or what do they do in their spare time? What's their strongest trait and biggest handicap? And so on. Also, knowing the basics of the world they live in can be helpful in figuring out how they would react to situations. And as far as design goes I'm still trying to figure that out myself, but so far silhouettes and thinking about shapes a lot has helped incrediably. And that can be clothing or body shape, as long as the silhouette reads well I've noticed the design is more successful.
You guys are awesome. Keep it coming. Thank you.