What Is Character Design?
Everyone has at some point played pretend. When you play cops and robber or playing ponies,
you are to a certain degree designing a character. The thoughts behind the pretty pony with
the golden haired mane, ground themselves in the same thoughts that led to the creation of
iconic characters like Shadowfax or Pinkie Pie. A good character design can make or break the character's success.
A character's design can at times be the most memorable part of said character, especially for those who aren't familiar with the character media of origin.
Character Design Principles
There are many things to keep in mind when designing a character.
Some of the big principles of character design are: silhouette, Shape language, proportions,
colour, personality, backstory and continuously iteration. The most important job a character design has is to tell the viewer/player
as much as possible about the given character
Layers
A character is mostly a collection of shapes. The main shape is the silhouette.
on top of the silhouette are "secondary" shapes that give form to things such as clothing, weapons, hair and more.
On top of that layer are the "tertiary" shapes that define all the finer details such as texture. the tertiary layer
is also the layer that gives the form dimension.
It's a Whole Process
Like all design processes, Character design is all about iterations.
You have to experiment with the silhouette and even when you've settled on a silhouette,
the secondary and tertiary shapes experimented with. Professional character designers
often end up making hundreds of iterations before landing anywhere close to their final product