Simple question on heroic characters

#1

Before I start my questions, I would like to know everyone out there that I am not a character designer :slight_smile:

I have two simple (but broad) questions about heroic characters that I tried to ignore when younger because of fear but that now I want to tackle :smiley:

I´ve been trying to design a heroic cartoon character´s FACE lately, and I´ve have found out that I don´t know what makes them look… well… heroic.
Is it that the hero type must be frowning all the time (:P) ? If so, what about his other expressions? And what if the hero is a very lighthearted optimistic guy like say, superman, or the characters from the golden age of comics? Is it proportions? If so, what happens when you need very big parts, for example, big eyes?
In brief, what makes a cartoon hero still look heroic

The other question I have is that I´ve found out that in some versions, my hero ends up looking more like a villain, and sincerely, I still don´t know why (Is it the extra frowning? I know it´s the extra frowning! :stuck_out_tongue: ) My idea has always been that villains use more angular shapes than other characters, but I don´t know if this is really correct; even more, I don´t think this might be a very healthy solution in character creation at all

Anyway, thanks a lot before hand for all who wanted to help me,

CHR

#2

“Drawing cutting-edge comics” by Christopher Hart has all you need.

#3

Thank you very much mister3d, but being totally sincere it didn´t helped, I searched and read “cutting edge comics” and “drawing comic book heros and villains” from hart after your suggestion, but all I found out was the drawing principles for drawing the stylized human figure, which I already know

Probably I expressed myself wrong in the previous post, I know the drawing principles, I can draw, you might say, a superhero or a villain, however, in theory, I still cannot say what is that difference one from another

Again, thanks a lot, sincerely, for your help anyway :bowdown: , guess I´ll keep looking

#4

The book has a chapter about the hero head. :argh: :slight_smile:
If you talk about your batman, then there are some anatomical issues, as well as not enough masculinuty in his face.
You need to learn anatomy to make convincing characters, you just won’t go too far without. (I didn’t fix all anatomical issues, anyway you have to learn it)

Simply speaking, masculine is closer to a more cornered body and facial features, and feminine - more circular, more roundish.

Now look at your hero - his face is roundish. I underlined whis jaw, cheeckbones and forehead bones. You immediately recognise a hero.

#5

HAHAHA! Thanks a lot again mister3d! Actually my batman is from long ago, and… well… his face is from a real guy… :smiley: :shrug: (which means that at that moment I was trying to get him as real as posible, not with a heroic aproach or… well, femenine… :smiley: :shrug: but instead based on real photo references) :smiley:

What I tried to say on the post before was that I´m pretty confident right now with my anatomy skills; that is, I know about muscles and know where to look at if I don´t, and I can draw easily the squared jawed guys from comic books, but my problem comes more from the personality side. For example, I know that in Disney some people were assigned to draw villains more often than others, because they had more sensibility for it. Probably everybody @ the studio could draw very well, but only some of them drew the bad guys. I would like to know what differences did they did on their drawings (scar vs simba, ursula vs whatever the good guy was in the mermaid, tarzan vs the hunter, peter pan vs hook etc) and not so much about the anatomical drawing per se
I am very happy you visited my profile! (even though is so old, sorry), and even more for taking your time to give me advice again, I really appreciate it. Again, also, I hope my idea is clearer now :slight_smile:

#6

Sorry I can’t get what you mean, even after rereading several times. Do you want to know what makes bad and good heroic characters? What kind of differences between different types of heroic characters?.. Can you clarify? Still not sure. :blush:

#7

HAHA, don´t worry; I´ll try once again:

suppose we construct two heads with the procedure of mr. chris hart. One head is for a hero character, the other one is for a villain. This two characters are twins, with the only difference that one is a bad guy, and the other one is good ; how can we make one look like the bad guy consciously, and the other one like the good one. (Mr. Hart says: put a scar/mutation/ baldness/etc on the villain, but not all the bad guys have to have this problems do they? :smiley: )

#8

Oh I see…ok here’s an illustration for you. As you can see, we percieve “good” as:

  1. healthy
  2. the average one (not dofferent from most people, which also means healthy)
  3. masculine (of feminine for women)
  4. not dangerous to us
    (the opposite will create a “bad” character)

So any abnormalities in appearance will telll you the guy is bad. Also if he is hiding his face under glasses, or wears a beard, of has an unpleasant facial expression. You can watch movies and pay attention what makes bad guys look bad. Most of the time it’s what I listed.

Of course it’s a narrow-minded to percieve not beautiful people as bad ones, but our bioligical evolution worked this way, forcing us to select the most healthy parthner and communicate with strong and healthy people.
Beauty means health by the way. A beautiful person is a genetically healthy one. You can watch the BBC movie named “the human face”, it has an interesting discussion of it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280262/

As you can understand, we can keep the masculine features while adding the “bad” ones.

#9

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: :O!!:applause: :bowdown: :beer:

Well you´ve just become my #1 hero mister3d! that was exactly what I was looking 4! :beer: Thank you VERY VERY VERY much 4 your time, I really appreciate you took your time 2 teach an unknown guy from the other side of the world :bowdown:

(Oh… so that´s what mr. hart meant by the scars/baldnes/mutations :smiley: … and that´s why the hunchback of notre dame can look like the disney´s protagonist and not like the villain… :smiley: )

You´re tops mister3d! :buttrock: :thumbsup: Again thanks a lot 4 the lessons

P.S. The render in your portfolio looks just amazing also by the way :smiley:

#10

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.