The Art Lounge

[Garamonde]

I also have one with 4 buttons (even though I don't really use them lol), and mine's a Bamboo Capture I think.

[recme]

Heyo dudes. I'm wondering what are some tips when designing a character. That is one of my flaws and I want to get better at it.

[Zadaben]

Gors gave me some pretty good advice at some point this summer or early this school year I forget
but anyways to paraphrase from him (most likely leaving out something important or wording it confusingly as I tend to do), just make the character without overthinking it, and tweak it later.
If it's a human and it's the clothes that you're worried about, then I suggest paying a lot of attention to what people wear on a daily basis, or if they're from a different time period, researching that time period.

[The KKM]

Heyo dudes. I'm wondering what are some tips when designing a character. That is one of my flaws and I want to get better at it.

From personal experience? Focus on getting a good sillhouette, even if your style isn't cartoony. Work with good colours. Research a lot of clothings from different time periods, and people's faces, and the like.

[Baegal]

It's also really important to consider simplicity and life.
You want a design that's very flexible and open to interpretation (sometimes)--one that can be drawn by memory by people who've seen it before,
like when someone says, "draw Spongebob" or "draw Pikachu". It might not be exact, but there are always key details people catch that help craft the character like Spongebob's squareness or Pikachu's red cheeks and lightning tail. Those details are the one you want to focus primarily--it's what sets your character apart from the rest.

It also depends on what you're going for. Having a simple yet effective design sticks in the viewer's head and also saves you if you have to keep redrawing it for animating or comics, but sometimes detailed works really effectively for things like final bosses or huge things.

Movement and life is also really important in character design. It could be the design is good, but the drawing lacks life and makes the character look boring. Exaggeration helps in both bringing life and adding character to your design (think of Eggman's body proportions, or Chowder's facial expressions).

When it comes to color, just try to get a palette set so you don't have too many unnecessary colors. Unless it's part of the design, rainbow color schemes tend to be overdone. Try a balance between saturated and unsaturated colors. Having everything too bright hurts the eyes, but you don't want everything to look muted either.
(Again, unless that's what you're going for).

Bottom line, design is really flexible and there are a lot of factors to it.
Do multiple drafts--try even drawing the character from memory the next day and see what sticks between both drafts.
Ask other people to draw him/her/it to get a fresh outlook.
Keep practicing--if a design doesn't work, maybe parts of it can be used for future designs!

Good luck! o/