The beauty in simplicity.
I’m just going to straight up say this: I’m a huge stickler for good character designs. Not kidding, if there is a poor character design in something, I’m going to turn my nose up at it because I can’t get past how either stupid it looks or how pointless it is. I know, bad of me. Don’t care. I like eye-candy. I don’t like eyesores.
That being said, stop adding useless stuff to your characters. More items doesn’t mean more…good. In fact, the more junk you shove onto a design, it becomes cluttered and just ends up looking awful. Like, there are some designs out there that literally make my eyes hurt because they’ve got too much junk on it. Millions of useless details just bombard my sight all at once.
I remember browsing about dA (back when I hated it less) and I found this one chick’s gallery. She was a decent artist, but….ouugghhhh, those character designs. She wasn’t content with just a meager 100 buckles on her character. No there just needed to be more of EVERYTHING. BIGGER HAIR. MORE COLOURS. MORE PIERCINGS! MOOOORE TAIILS AND WIIINGS! MOOORRE BUUUCCKKKLLEESSS! MORE EVERYTHING! And all of this junk overshadowed the fact that this lady was actually fairly good at drawing.
Those (next to Soul Calibur, some of Tetsuya Nomura’s stuff, and Rob Leifeld) were probably some of the worst character designs I’ve witnessed to date.
This has probably got to be my favorite character design of EVER. It is simple, memorable, and badass all at the same time. It consists of only four colours maximum and two major accessories (the wings and the belt since those are the two that are most readily seen). No pointless buckles that buckle nothing, no zippers that go nowhere, no superfluous mesh plastered on the legs, no uneven pant legs no clashing colours no….useless shit. Everything on Terry’s costume has a purpose. Yes even the extra-long bat ears are useful.
Why am I showing you this? To prove that you can have a really good character design with minimal detail/colour.
I believe the only things you can really get away (to an extent) with this is with designs mechanical in nature. Like robots and cyborgs, and androids and space ships. And I’m not just saying this because I enjoy drawing robots and general sci-fi stuff. I’m saying this because robots and sci-fi stuff are really complex just to make them work properly. And showing some of that stuff can show the intricacy of a super-advanced robot or cyborg or spaceship.
(the below image is slightly terrifying, I apologize)
See all that stuff on those terrifying child-bots? Those weren’t added because they looked good. They’re there because they serve a purpose (okay, the horrifying dead eyes not so much, but you get the idea). But again, there’s only so much you can put on a character before it just starts physically hurting the eyes of the viewer.
And why would you want just an overly complex character?? Not only does it take forever to draw out all those details, but can you imagine creating a comic or an animation and having to draw all that junk over and over and over and over and over and over again? I’m pretty sure you couldn’t finish a ten page comic like that without completely losing your mind!
In short more stuff =/= better design.
I felt the need to say this since it seems, just from what I’ve witnessed, is that anime and furries (that are pretty much everywhere on the internet) have the hardest time dealing with this. Now, I’m not saying that western art is exempt from this because…well…
UUUUUGHHHHH.
