Here I talk about character design and dissect character designs of mostly simple cute things from just about anywhere.
Full View Please!
Today, I am giving a somewhat silly tutorial on making “chibi” things. There’s are just a few tips on what I find cute, so don’t take it as law! I just see the thing at the top half happen A LOT. They make a normal-sized torso, and just put shorter limbs on it, it’s simply a pet peeve of mine. I feel that many times people just shrink down features haphazardly, and it ends up looking kind of weird or just not as cute as they were probably intending it to be.
![tastefullyoffensive:
[eatmorebikes]
I don’t normally reblog on this blog, but this is just too good and hilariously relevant.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m26j1bBI3g1qewacoo1_500.jpg)
I don’t normally reblog on this blog, but this is just too good and hilariously relevant.
Over the past little while I’ve realized something interesting.
You can spend your time designing a perfect character with all of the good design qualities, but that certainly isn’t all there is to a character, to make it lovable.
Lately I’ve been playing a game called Moshi Monsters, a cute kid’s pet website with all kinds of monsters to adopt and collect.
At first, I sort of scoffed at the site. The designs were terrible! I tore apart most of the designs in my mind. There were a few golden ones and that’s what got me interested (that little volcano guy is GREAT), but for the most part, I felt the designs were weak and thrown-together. (what even IS Luvli?) I even STILL think that about some. However, Moshi Monsters currently has over half of all British children and millions of kids around the world playing and loving every bit of it.
Why? I thought to myself, as I watched a video of a young girl exclaiming “She’s so cute, she’s so fun!!” about a new pet she received. The pet itself was just a heart-shape with eyeballs and a mouth on it, but she loved it. I boggled over the fact that the most popular fan-created pets being voted over in a contest were an egg, and a piece of toast with arms and legs.
Gosh dang this is a sad-looking “moshling” to me.
However, lately, I’ve begun to fall in love with these monsters. In fact, I have a paid account there, have bought several magazine, pre-ordered the music album they released, and continue to draw fanart.
What was doing that? What’s the draw? Why do I love it, why does everyone love it??
And that’s when I realized it, a good design can mean nothing without good CHARACTER.
It’s as simple as that! The context, personality, and what a character DOES is just as important as a good design, in all aspects. Why do the kids love that stupid heart with eyes? Because it does a little dance and song when you click on it! It’s a rare one you can only get by becoming a paid member as well. I’s got a little story behind it, and a reason to want it, it does something fun, and THAT’S what the kids love.
A lot of the characters have grown on me just from finding out there back stories, or seeing how they talk and move, all those little things make them lovable.
I’ll give another example of something more familiar, that gave me this similar feeling. In Pokemon Black and White, I remember being apprehensive about a few of the new Pokemon designs. When I first saw a picture of Scraggy and Scrafty, I thought they looked kind of weird. “What even are these?”
(click Here and Here to see the animations, darnit tumblr.)
But then, I saw it in-game. And WOAH. what was that move it did? It’s beat boxing? It’s like a little punk! That’s awesome! It’s younger form pulls up it’s little baggy pants! Adorable!!!
Suddenly, these two Pokemon became AWESOME when they were put into context, when they gained more than just the visual first-look.
First impressions are important. You want to be able to tell what a character is like and what they are at a glance. However, it’s CONTEXT to the character that also make it shine. Both of these aspects are important. Making your character look lovable is one thing, but truly giving people a REASON to love your character is another.
It can make the difference between “That Poppet up there is a really boring-looking cat…” to “Holy crap, it’s doing a little dance in it’s little boots!? I have GOT to have that thing!!!”
Wah thank you Muar!! I’m really glad you enjoy it! I still need to finish a few design submissions haha. I’m really glad that people enjoy the entries I make when I’m in an analyzing mood!
Sorry for late response to this, but thank you!! It must be done.
This is Rainbow King, from the Friendswithyou company!
I saw this character the other day in the Sanrio store, in some kind of crossover merchandise, and I had to look him up! He’s absolutely adorable and I just love the design.
Red/blue/yellow color schemes seem to sit well with me (and most people) so of course I was immediately drawn to this character. The simple cute face is made a bit more interesting by being made with lines of different colors, too. I love the little colored balls around it’s head, they remind me of color swatches, with the nice circle shapes of primary colors. The blue is used again on the eyes and the collar, red again on the mouth and usually-red boots and gloves, and yellow on the ribbon. I suppose there’s not much point in pointing those out, but I like how it sticks to primary colors + white. You can’t really lose with those!
The colored balls also help form a nice silhouette, as well. I wish I could more scientifically describe why I like this character, but I just love it! Look at those cute little boots! Those cute proportions! That tiny little face and nice bright colors with lots of white! This design is super appealing to me, and it’s very unique. I always kind of like little creatures that aren’t exactly supposed to be any one thing or animal, those are tricky to come up with, I think. Especially when you base it off a concept like “rainbow”, which I think this lil guy pulls off pretty well, without actually having ALL the colors of the rainbow on it.
I was helping a guy make his rabbit character cuter by reducing snout size and giving more forehead, while keeping big eyes (and making her a bit more rabbit-like, in the same way). And I thought this little trick might be helpful to someone, so I’m showing it here! Apologies for the redlines being a bit sloppy.
Here’s a character I found pretty randomly! Her name is U-Tan (うーたん), a puppet character from a Japanese children’s show called “Inai Inai Pah!” (Basically “Peek-a-boo!”)
She is described as being friendly, loving to sing, and a little mischievous. Apparently she shakes the maracas on her head sometimes.
Now, what first caught my eye about this character was those maracas! What a cute concept, to have kind of maraca ears. They’re very noticeable and make a good silhouette, plus very unique.
Aside from that, the other main thing I noticed on her was the colors. She has a really good pallet in my opinion.
First, there’s the main two colors on her body. She has a pale yellow face and arms, an orange body, and orange maracas. The combination of yellow and orange looks nice to me, good analogous colors.
Now with those two main colors, we have the other colors used as accents, and these I REALLY like. First, she has the patterns on her maracas, which are two green stripes with white and yellow stars. She also has a line of three colored buttons on her body; red, yellow, and green. These work to match the green and yellow colors on her maracas, the green especially. Without those buttons, there would be nothing to really harmonize the design of the maracas throughout the character. Otherwise the green especially would look out of place, but it really looks good here (and analogous to the yellow).
The maracas design is also well done. The patterns on them aren’t too crazy or detailed, but they’re just detailed enough to keep the design simple and still make us recognize them as festive maracas.
As for the two colors I haven’t mentioned, the white stars and the red button… I MIGHT be digging a little too deep here, but I think they’re also not without mirrors and aesthetic values to them.
First, the red button makes for a good chain of analogous colors. Red > orange > yellow > green. Especially for the red/orange/yellow combo, I really like that. And if I wanted to dig even deeper I could say the red is mirrored in the red of her open mouth, and even on her pink cheeks.
As for the white stars, white is really hard to go wrong with, and it doesn’t really clash with anything. Plus, there is a mirror of it in the white shines on her eyes.
Speaking of the face, the only real flaw I can find is that the face isn’t the most unique. A combo of black eyes with shines, a cute “w” mouth, and pink cheeks is not uncommon in the least among cute characters. You can’t really get a good grasp on a personality just from these features. Though the placement of her eyes strikes me as being a little different, as they’re higher up than what we normally see in those kinds of faces.
Overall, this character really stood out to me by it’s unique silhouette, cute patterns, and really well done colors. This is a cute, good thing here.
Okay, getting back to finishing these up, apologies for the wait! I got way more than I expected.
Here is a character by Mrcrapinson!
This is quite a cool design! It stays simple yet it has that sort of complicated anatomy to it, but only when needed! I like the idea of having things held in the hands like a backpack. The hand on the end of the tail keeps to the weird hand monster theme and makes up for its lack of hand on it.. hands.
Also I like the color of the character, its simple and doesnt need much more color, and implies a desert-y feel. My only problem is maybe the face. It’s cute and simple and goes with the simplicity of the rest of the character, but I’ve seen those kinds of eyes on a lot of chibi, humanoid characters before so they mostly appear generic to me. Otherwise I really like everything else about this! Great job.
An actual mascot, by CarlDoonan!
I like the theme here, mixing the dog with the pastry! It’s cute and a good design to go with a logo. It doesn’t have a TON of personality, but for this sort of thing it doesn’t really need it much, and it still has the distinct features of a scottie dog, with the features of a biscuit or long doughnut. I like that the fur is like icing on top! And the swirly hair is a very thematic touch as well. Same with the speckles. Though, the color that confuses me is in the middle, that greyish tone. Is it like a creamy center? Either way this has a nice look to it. Great job!
(Sorry for being so late getting these done, I had time to finish a lot when I started it, but I got bogged down again! I will get to all of you!)
