create the perfect character design with this one weird trick
Do whatever the hell you want.
I don't like to bury the lede so I'm putting this out up front. The conclusion of this post is do whatever the hell you want. There's no gimmick here, no trick, no twist in the third act where I turn everything on its head and reveal what I was really saying all along.
May the Devil strike me dead if I am lying, this is the truest advice I can give you. It is the one weird trick that doctors don't want you to know about (they hate me).
Do whatever the hell you want.
i don't want to break it for you
I write this post in part in response to a hundred emails and direct messages that I have not answered (sorry) from earnest creatives who reach out to me asking, "could you take a look at my designs and tell me what I'm doing wrong?"
I almost never reply to them because I don't think there is a polite way to tell them that yes, I could do that, but I won't, because I don't want to, unless you pay me. There isn't a way to phrase it that isn't craven.
I do offer, on my Patreon, a supporter tier where you can pay me to seriously assess a character design, and where I will offer critique and thoughts to the best of my ability and try to help you improve upon it. I am... quite slow to do this (sorry) and I have left people hanging for rather longer than I should many times (I'm really sorry), and partly for that reason I don't advertise it a lot, but also... I don't advertise it because I feel increasingly that a better service to offer than critique is encouragement, and reassurance.
I detect so often, in the people who ask me to critique their work, a kind of pre-emptive shame, a certainty that they must be doing something wrong. I am so often asked to tell people what is wrong with their work, and rarely if anything is wrong with it. I am doing something wrong, I must be doing something wrong. People make apologies about their work, or deflect assumed attacks ahead of time. "I know the linework is bad, but..." "obviously I haven't been able to shade and render it, but..."
"Here's my character, which I made for my own story and to appeal to my own interests, and who expresses my ideas and my feelings... and I must be doing something wrong. So please, be brutal, be honest, tell me everything that's bad about it."
No. Do whatever the hell you want. That's how you make art. That's what art is. What worth has a tool except that it serves you? Do whatever the hell you want. Your work as an artist isn't to make art, the purpose of art is to make you. To be the scaffold from which you sculpt yourself or the hammer drill that breaks you apart. It is yours, it serves you, and it doesn't need my editorial to polish it. Do whatever the hell you want.
the problem with good advice is that it is worthless
The acidically corporatized is culture, the stench of chlorine and bleach and antiseptic. I recognize the joy that millions take in the design principles of gacha — appeal at all costs, appeal in all things, appeal from every angle and every moment — and I try to hold my snobbery; assess it. Disney's latest movie protagonist has the same face that Rapunzel did, that Elsa did, that Moana did, that the characters on that animated show for kids on Netflix did, and that other animated show for kids on Netflix did, and that other animated show for kids on Netflix did, and that other one, and that other one. It's commercially viable. The animators slept under their desks to meet the deadline. It tested well with audiences. It doesn't get a second season.
These things mean something to people, something real, and in ten years time there will be a seven hour video essay on YouTube expressing in vivid detail the quiet solemnity or liminal brilliance. I hate myself for judging it. I judge it relentlessly. I will be old, and I will be wrong, and I won't admit it. AI generated slop-vomit will be the note that resonates with someone's soul and they are going to say so. Everything gets reappraised. Everything means something to someone. I will be old and I won't admit it.
Every time I see someone simping for a gacha character design I lose a sliver of my soul. I am old and I won't admit it. The liminal solemnity of Honkai Star Rail. Save me, Ryuko Kui.
How To Design A Good Character (step 1 of 1)
There's nothing there until you put it there. Everything you do is a decision. Make the character on purpose. Through them, want something openly. Make up your own definition of "good" and kill someone on that hill. Kill the part of you that cringes.
Do it on purpose. Follow the pattern on purpose. Embody the archetype on purpose. Make it a trope on purpose. Do it on purpose. Do it on purpose. Do it on purpose.