character design question: how to redraw your character?

[Lunatique]

One thing you can try to do is this:

-Take your drawing of your character, add a layer and use white to "erase" a feature on your character by painting over it. For example, you paint over only the eyebrows.

-Add another layer, and now redraw the eyebrows but make an effort to make it look different. If the eyebrows were curved, now try angular. If they were thick and bushy, now try thin and tapered.

-Do this to all the major features--eyes, nose, lips, jaw bone, cheeks, forehead, hair style...etc.

-You can add more than one variation of each of the features.

-Now mix and match the different features and variations.

[musicguy]

Hi Leionaaad

There may be a few possible problems here.

One potential problem may be because you've not seen enough styles and tried drawing enough different styles. It's easy to get into a bottleneck if you are too used to a certain genre. It's the same as music writing. If somebody is too deep into classical he finds it hard to do good pop. Or somebody that writes rap will find it hard to do ballads.

Another potential problem may be because you've already had a very fixed concept of how your character should look like. If that is the case, you may need to start analyzing his character and get to know him inside out. Once you do that, you may find facets of his character you have never thought of before and that may help you discover new design elements for him. Strangely enough, theory sometimes works better than practical.

I've written a lens on Character Design at http://www.squidoo.com/anime-character-design which is relatively popular. I hope you find it useful :)

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