Art For Now

Colours and Character Design!

NOTE: This is how I design characters, not every artist has to follow this, but for books like the ones people make on here, I find it useful to incorporate a character's personality into the colours they wear.

I've been experimenting a little bit more with character design and how colours affect the appearance of a character. In this little side chapter I'm going to be explaining how I see colour and how I design my character based on this:

Every colour will have two sides.

For example, look at the purple. The middle one is what I would designate neutral purple. The 'cooler' purple leans towards blue and the warmer purple leans towards magenta/red.

What does this have to do with character design you ask?

Well, Let's use two of my babies to give the example :) (This is not spoiler content, this WAS character design for me, so it's just a representation)

Avalon: Upper Left Corner

Armel: Lower Right Corner

The first thing you might notice is that they are both white. (lol yay diversity -_-')

Armel IS lighter than Avalon but there's also another noticeable difference in skin colour.

Now up close it's a little more apparent, Armel's skin colour (right) is a lot COOLER than Avalon's (left). Avalon's is WARMER because it leans towards orange (which is practically the warmest you can get) and Armel leans towards red/pink which is COOLER.

In fact, Avalon is WARMER in nearly every aspect compared to Armel.

In clothing, Avalon's dress which is primarily pink on the warmer side of pink (it's a light rose which is close to red). Although purple is not explicitly a cool colour, this purple leans towards the blue side which IS cooler.

The point is, is that not only to the expressions and body postures say something about the character's personality, colour can too :)

It also helps when you have a speck of different colour to add. For example, Avalons all warm colours, but her eyes are blue, this draws the attention of the observer and it matches Armel's colours so that can be taken symbolically.

Cooler colours can mean a lot of things in character design. These two characters are almost polar opposites of one another in terms of personality (with exceptions).

For Armel: His colours are cooler which I use to symbolize his introvert-ness, he has a cool personality, he can be manipulative, he's calm, collected, intellectual.

For Avalon: She's a lot more fiery, makes snap decisions, can be impulsive, has a very warm and outgoing personality.

This does NOT mean these characters have to always be portrayed in warm or cool colours no matter what but in terms of a portfolio picture, these warm vs. cool colours can be helpful in conveying personality on a different level.

Xxxxx

Warm and cool colours also mix well together so you can't go wrong there either! :)