I feel like people are kind of missing the point, saying that BaM's redesigns are uglier. BaM deliberately overexaggerated their designs to make their point clear. Sure, I preferred the original squid girl, but the point of the exercise wasn't to make her more appealing, it was to show how shape language changes a design. Of course in a real character design you could pull back on that, maybe include some more circular shapes to combine "friendly" and "speedy", but BaM was starting at level 1 and showing how *one shape* can exaggerate a design. Ignore the grumbly comments, BaM. This video has been really helpful for me and I'm sure many other artists feel the same!
Even at the end they say that they have no idea of what makes a good character design, telling us that there isn’t only one way to design a character or definitive way to
I understand. My art got criticized so much i stopped showing people. Though i am trying to start digital amination to show people they cant make me stop drawing because they dont like my style
So what I learned from this is 1. Put a bunch of shapes together to make a silhouette 2. Make sure the silhouette has defined features to make it stand out 3. Color contrast is important on both the characters and the characters with the background 3. Make it somewhat simplistic but not too much 4. Exaggerate poses but again not too much 5. All kinds of body types are good 6. Draw more shapes to make more interesting characters 7. Draw line ups (with variety) 8. Use references 9. Also good palettes 10. Story is important when going with different styles
just keep in mind that they overexagurated shape language in this video to properly show it, You dont need to be a bunch of triangles smashed togheter. A good example of shape language is the wolf from Puss in boots the last wish. He has alot of triangles in his design without being over the top. Mostly, your design should have shapes, but not be made of shapes, if that makes sense
that's why sometime they have to give the character an aura when standing in a detailed setting, so the characters won't get consumed by the background
They made her look like an angry old lady! But I think that was the point by using the shape. Maybe if they used a different shape then she would’ve looked better
@@mittycommitspizzatime92 3 words my friend 3 words "Plankton and mr krab hardcore coop Cock and Ball Torture (parachute, ball stretcher, kickings, hot)"
"This fan-submitted artwork is good but has a few problems that makes it look bad, so we will fix a few of those!" *proceeds to change their entire personality, artstyle and shape*
I honestly think that's good. I'm an artist myself and I would rather have a "Good job but this is horrible let's fix it together" than a "yeah it's cool." then nothing more. We need criticism to improve don't we. Edit: Coming back to this I realized how much this character was changed. The original design surely gave it a pleasing look, the new one does seem way too different. A way too strong change to the original charm the character gave.
@@oldchannelawhellnah yeah, but that doesn't mean one must mutilate your characters to appease some assholes online. The original fish girl was fine, they had no right to turn it into a cubist monstocity.,
@@themadoneplays7842 I mean yeah but if I'm not wrong that was just an example of how simple shapes can completely change a character, I'm not sure if they were actually suggesting these changes for the original design
@@oldchannelawhellnahThat's not a fix. It's a do-over. That's like if you went to the doctor with a broken arm and his solution was to amputate the arm and attach a prosthetic.
2:48 conflates clarity of pose in silhouette with clarity of character in silhouette. There was nothing wrong with the character's silhouette before and was completely recognizable due to the tail, pointed arm bands, tentacles, and hat. I would wager that in a line up of silhouetted characters, she'd be distinct as is. the "fix" makes her pose more clear, but doesn't do much to define her character silhouette any more than before (and it makes her look a bit more alien, which slightly chipped away at her appeal). Her pose is also pretty unnatural looking now, as an added "bonus". And it's been mentioned in the comments plenty, but the "shape language" redesign completely butchered the appeal of the original design; so much so that I wouldn't call them the same character... if anything, it proved that combining shapes together can make a much more appealing character than dogmatically adhereing to a single shape. Just look at a few of the examples givin leading up to that redesign: Sonic in composed of triangles, and circles, the old man from up is mostly square but has a round nose, Wreck it Raplh is overly square but has rounded edges and a round jaw, Aku has almost no triangles in his head and is comprised of rectangles and circles, Batman has triangle eyes, but is mostly boxy with his jaw and shoulders, spiderman in the example is much more round than angular. The shape language bit completely missed the nuance for a dogmatic rule of shapes when it comes to character design. This entire video is kind of sloppy like that.
I agree. I want to believe they meant well, but any aspiring artist who takes this advice is probably going to end up in a worse spot for having done so. Every character given looked good in their own right, and yes polish was needed but there was still appeal. After they showed the "improved version" each character felt derivative. Cute dog princess becomes a princess Peach clone. Fun pirate captain girl becomes ugly sea witch. Smart lawyer and dumb demon become pretentious lawyer and ugly demon. Seriously, everything just became so darn ugly for the most part.
The second design reads waaaay more clearly. The first character is made up of more round shapes, making her looking cuter and more approachable, but then her expression and attire read "bad guy." The second design is very clearly meant to be a dangerous villain and unapproachable. By removing the rounded shapes, there is a much more obvious direction for what the character is supposed to be.
I feel like the redesign of the demon and human lost the whole idea of its comedic value. The original had the demon looked surprised while the human looks to the demon with a smug look as if the human managed to fool the demon. Now have the demon just focused on looking at his scroll while the human focuses on reading out loud from his book and it generates a sense of seriousness, which isn't bad at all. However, it takes away the comedic personality the original was trying to convey and plus the comedic value from the original focuses on the facial expressions, thus a full body wouldn't really be necessary. (Yes, I saw a comment that mentioned about this and I fully agreed.) However, I felt the idea of exaggerating the body shapes of both the human and demon does help improve the drawing in some aspects. A very nice contrast between the two, nonetheless.
Why would your animated character be a realistic human who lives on a regular house, when he can be a yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea? That is what my teacher once said to me.
I mean, I never do it either and that's not something I ever seem to have an issue with. Usually, your characters are intentionally leaning to a side anyway.
@@Rodrigo-br8qe i usually try to draw the frame of their body an of how i want them positioned and then follow that frame as closely as possible when fleshing them out
As an Eastern artist, I find Eastern and Western take different approach when it comes to animation. Eastern character design can be unanimous in body shapes(as you mentioned here), but they shine through exaggerated movement and animation. Western character designs are very shape oriented. So they have so many exciting wacky shapes, but when it comes to actual animation, they are really boring to look at with little exaggeration and depth to their movement. I think it boils down to how easier it is to figure out movements of a character that is unanimous or akin to average human body than super exaggerated stylized characters. Both do have their outliers tho. Like One Piece's exaggerated designs and Old Disney's magnificent and fluid animation.
I wonder if it has something to do with differences in western individualist and eastern collective societies. It's also not strictly true that Western animation is stiff. The manic comic animation of the Looney Tunes of the 40s is still alive today even with simple designs. Depends on the show. I think of Anime as pretty static much of the time until there's an action scene. There's a difference in division of labor.
@@bloodymoon7315 i disagree. there’s no personality in the live action designs. nothing to make them stand out. they all end up looking like the same character.
@@CUTIE_POXX Just further presses the point that school is kind of pointless when there are those teachers who don't really teach anything in class themselves, instead only relying on textbooks or website for referencing the course curriculum. It all just matters only the discipline of the students who care to go to research beyond what's taught in the class.
Actually, Pinterest can be an amazing source of, not only art, but art advice. I find content just like the stuff in this video, and I find a lot of artists who show off their character design exercises, that have been drawn with a proper character design formula- really inspiring. But the thing is, you have to scratch the surface of art Pinterest if you really want to find the 'better' stuff. One click on an anime girl in cute clothes and it's all you'll see, unless you search for the other stuff.
I'm a multimedia arts student and this video is literally EVERYTHING we've been studying for the first few semesters. I genuinely reference some of their philosophies because this is how it's taught to us as well, and I guess BaM makes it easier for me to remember. Art is genuinely subjective but I think the flak really comes from the idealism of Western animation lol. It's also important to note that these are character designs for animation. The redesigns are "improved" so that 1) it's easier to animate, 2) it's easier to advance the storyline, 3) it's easier to remember how to draw them when referenced. Shape language doesn't only convey personality but it's technical that we can actually reference to them when in-betweening, storyboarding, all that.
I scrolled all the way down through the comments just to find someone who said this! I personally use tracing paper to amend this issue (not a 100% fix, but it can make things a lot more balanced when it's supposed to be), but I do all my art by hand rather than digitally, so I don't have the fancy techniques like photoshop, so when it gets down to the illustration portion of a design, I only have 1 chance to get the color down right, because there's no take backs afterwards 😅
@ ALL 3 OF YOU, LOL XD I hold the paper up to a light and turn it around to see it flipped and it helps me catch lots of mistakes. You can also take a picture with your phone and flip that. And the mirror works, too, like Catalina said! I really like to scan works in progress also because then I CAN digitally reverse it, and it also allows me kind of save a backup of the lineart and stuff. If I REALLY botch the coloring phase, then I can throw that away, then trace my finished lines by loading the scanned lineart, putting a clean piece of paper up to my computer screen and then tracing over them to get them all back. Sure, I have to do the inking again, but at least I don't have to start all over if I ruin the coloring. To an extent, you can do an extra layer even with traditional drawing if you have a computer or something else to use as a light table.
15:44 simultaneously the best joke this channel has ever made, and the worst, since I was planning to show this video to my art teacher. Not anymore, lol.
@Diego Haro your animation teacher must be really cool then xd One of the two animation teachers we have looks like he is in his 20's when actually he's almost 40 xD
The dog princess redesign was a little bit TOO exaggerated, they changed totally the concept of what it was, changing completely the colours and remove the cape it had. Yes the colors were kind of exaggerated but they were completely changed instead of keeping the palette as similar as possible
I agree. The red cape and less round design gave the princess the vibes of a kind girl who was born into a monarchy but has medieval/Victorian gender standards forced on her. The redesign was almost too friendly and feminine with her round shapes and lack of cape. My guess on her personality eas confirmed when they showed the art of her gardening. She was wearing her nice dress while kneeling in the dirt and shoveling. That told an entire story from that one picture alone. In the new design, the shovel implied a similar story, but her actions spoke louder than her design and i couldn't tell if she was kneeling in dirt because she is so round. The color values on the redesign were indeed better though imo
That is a mood right there I used to draw like these very bad characters that had to much geometry and no shoulders and no eyes. To the same thing with the eyes. To the same with with now shoulders. Then a series of anime styles. Then a series of cartoony styles. Then combined the cartoony style with the anime style and oh wow we made it somewhere.
@@raidstrt_8766 what I am trying to do is combine an anime style with somewhat of a realistic style. This style though I only really applied to the eyes of my characters. And also same here with the no eyes part. Most of my characters didn't have eyes because I didn't know how to draw eyes so since my characters used to be made out elements like water, fire, ice, land, etc. I just decided that they didn't need eyes but once I finally gave my main character eyes which were these circles with lines around, like how a kid would draw the sun, I liked the design so much that I kept lines around one of the character's eyes ever since, although now instead of it just being a part of his eye it is more like an injury or result of something instead. My character's designs also used to be very bad. The characters' designs were to simple, but now ever since I changed the characters into humans and completely changed their stories they now look alot better, though I am still improving so they are still bound to change again.
@@solarelements23 That is so interesting, With my style, I am focusing on a anime style then coloring it as it were a simplistic cartoon. So usually I focus most of my time on the lineart, adding the detail so then I can color it in. Also, your story on how your eyes improved throughout time, my story is pretty similar! As a kid, I refused criticism and would always make excuses to not make a change to my art. You could say I was ignorant to change. This ignorance would continue til I made it to 5th grade, where I would finally notice what everyone was talking about and would actually try improving my art. That would only last for awhile as I would be stressing myself on so many flaws til I decided to take a break from art. A year to be exact. I lost my whole ability to do art. So coming back to it was a hard task because it felt like starting from stage one. So long story short, ( Because this is a long message lol ) I drew furries for 2 years because I forgot how to draw people, later would look at reference and draw humans again, change to digital art which I've been doing for almost 3 years now and try many styles til I find the right one.
While this is good, I feel as if some of the redesigns missed the points of the intent of the original designs and cared more about making it marketable and not making it have actual fleshed out meaning
Well that's kinda what they're going for. They aren't really giving tips on how to make good original characters, they're giving tips on how to make characters that stand out, characters that are easily identifiable from the silhouette, characters that use specific shape language. But not of those are really all that important if you aren't intending for your character to be an icon, if your character looks good, like the first OC pirate chick, it doesn't need to follow any of the rules as strictly as they act as that just completely changes or removes the personality of the character.
@@Xecution099 they're not here to tell you how to make your characters, they're here to tell you the rules of icon. They're solid rules to make iconic characters, but if you don't want to market characters then you can break these rules. The redrawings in this video were kinda aiming for generic.
11:02 "lazy" I think this was a fantastic video on character design, but it should be noted that ideas, poses and color are different for different cultures! That image of the buddha is not meant to convey the state of someone whose lazy, but rather the buddha during his final days of life, before he entered paranirvana. and turning back to those buddhist ideas, it affects color, too! Red in our culture can signify danger or strong emotion, but in tibetan buddhism, red is a color of protection and compassion. We view blue as something meaning sadness, while for them blue is a color of wisdom. white = mourning, etc.
Hey lila thanks for clarifying that! We were not thinking of any religious meaning; mainly just the pose of the statue! But thank you for pointing that out we love to learn :)
In general, pure red is a very intense (and sometimes harsh) color, Which would only make sense for it to be used to convey danger or compassion, because both are very strong feelings! It’s used for stop signs or alarms because it’s eye catching, and why hearts are mainly colored red in advertisement. Other examples that red may signify to others are: anger, passion, blood, love, fire. Talking about colors and what they can represent or convey is such an interesting topic of mine!
Rhaynebow Not just hair, but other design elements (facial, costume, and props most notably) are ways you can plus up a ‘meh’ human-proportioned design into a stellar one. One Piece’s Luffy & Hunter X Hunter’s Gon are good examples of that philosophy. (Luffy has a lean muscular build with messy short black hair & wears a long sleeved red cardigan, yellow sash, oversized blue trousers with cuffs & a round brim straw hat. Gon has long, spiky black green tipped hair and his usual outfit is composed of a oversized green jacket with red trim, white tank top, oversized green short shorts, and green laced boots.) The point being is you can apply the principles of good, readable character design to whatever it is you’re cooking up, and the principles of caricature & shape value can still be applied to designs with “conventional” human proportions. Keep the basics to heart, you know?
Also with some genres of anime they go into chibi form where they literally have the same body, or even just an oval of their face pops into the screen to scream at something that's just been said, so the hair needs to be iconic to serve that purpose so when its only their floaty head in a speech bubble you still know it's them
I also noticed that detail some time ago. Unfortunately, since then I can't look at anime/manga-styled artwork without feeling of same-face-syndrome shoving into my brain. I heard that in the past it was done intentionally so studios could reuse same shots, frames and designs for different animes (because of low budget) and over time it just became heavily fused with the genre itself. Not sure, if that true, it's just a random story.
Coming back to this video a few years after first watching it and wow, I regularly use more of the design advice from this 20 minute video than from an entire semester of animation class. *I'm not joking.*
Not gonna lie, I can't stand looking at that animated pilot. Just something about Vivzie's animation style really gets under my skin, but I'm honestly not sure why. ._.
the style was always more for an illustration purpose rather than animation; Vivzie has always had experience animating detailed characters, sure, but she never learned how to effectively translate picture style into animation style. In the long run, adding a few pink spots and some stripes on a spider isn't very practical for the long run.
Lol I love that XD I don't think it takes anything away from the characters, I just think it doesn't add anything except the amount of time it'll take for the next episode to come out
I think its important to realize that this is a very HEAVILY STYILIZED art style. The points are good but you can bend them and take in the ones that will/can help you with YOUR own style. You don't have to change your style to fit this video or take every point extremely seriously. Also, some tips and tricks may not apply to you and your style. Thats okay. Remember! These are tips, not "you must do these things or else your art is terrible and your characters are terrible...etc etc"
@cloudyangeltv SAME the character i'm drawing is supposed to look like he would blend in irl which means no crazy hair or shapes so this video isn't helping much. .
Designing a character doesn't mean morphing and changing the art style of the original character completely, the squid girl actually looked normal before being turned into a person who looked like they just got their 4th round of plastic surgery for the day.
The problem is, you use an extremely cartoony, almost non-humanoid artstyle. These principles almost only work with very cartoony drawings, and taking most of the details doesn't make it more recognizable and it makes its palette smaller.
"Animation can be more powerful than live action." Disney: *I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that.* EDIT: y'all need to calm down in the replies, this was literally just a joke about how Disney's recent movies have all been live action
@Max the point is that the live Disney movies today still suck even with the animations. It's not an animation movie if the movie isn't fully animated.
@@owlismyfavouritecolorflame2325 I agree. A movie must be good enough to attain successful revenue. If the movie sucked, it will have terrible revenue.
@@tvoovm7254 maybe its sarcasm but its not what i said, what i said is the aladdin remake made 500 million dollars, basically disney has a stupid amount of cashcows and as long as pretentious critics and stupid children who may or may hot be pretentious buy tiquests, we will get more Also avatar
Listen, this is so valuable, like disgustingly valuable. In 100 years these principles will still be essential, like they were 100 years ago too. P.S. thanks for the shout out my boys
'like *disgustingly valuable* ' I felt that😂😂😂 I should have been taking notes but I was too eager to know what the whole video was about😂😂 I'll need to watch it again properly now
Hmmm... I wouldn't bet my last cent on it. The cultral meaning about shapes are subject to change over time. Those tips might be valuable *TODAY*, but in 100 years? People might see in round shapes the impersonation of death and epidemics and a pointy triangle as nothing else than nachos by then...
@@brainsteroids8043 wooow watch the N words there Aaron, not just that I am not, but my nation saved 50k of you during WW2. Its a joke, know yore memes dude.
This is one of my favorites methods 1. Try to think of an object or thing 2. Make it to a humanoid with some of the "thing" features 3. Add backstory and personality to them 4. Done and done
4:17 I actually like the original art better. It's gorgeous!! These principles are fantastic, but just because you don't follow them exactly doesn't mean your art won't be iconic/recognizable. You do you!
Remember that these examples are each literally just ONE WAY to follow these principles. Before getting too confident in your own way of doing things- especially if that way isn't getting you the results you want- remember there are literally countless ways to apply art principles that still count as following them exactly, so rather than give up on a teacher's method because you don't like the first result you see it getting (not saying you, the reader are doing that NOW, but still) ask yourself how you could do it better in applying it to your own design and see what results you get. Remember, if you have a goal you want to accomplish, and everyone you look up to for accomplishing that goal does certain things, if you want to succeed like them, (while it's not guaranteed to be true or guaranteed to work for you) odds are you'll have to do those things too, whether you like them at first or not. It's very satisfying to be told that you don't need to change, but if you want to change the results you're getting, then you probably do need to change something you're doing.
I guess the problem is that we didn't get enough character traits to be able to design the character to fit their personality. If the intention of the original artist was to make the character evil, the redesign succeeded. f the intention of the original artist was to make the character mysterious and kind, then the design failed. It all really depends on your intentions.
I feel like this gave some very good advice, but nearly every design they had just didn't feel... right to me. Like, they just felt... really stereotypical to me. And every design I saw strayed far from what the original designs were going for. Other than that, they have some really good advice that works.
I agree! Their tips are really good, but I didn't like their versions of other's character designs, they just didn't appeal to me! I managed to find these tips relevant for me only when they used characters from Disney and other franchises as examples!
I think what’s important to remember is that they are not setting hard rules on art. Art does not really have solutions and so this is more of a suggestion or introduction to the tools that are used by pro-artists.
@@Lumberjack_king yeah for me the character lost depth, the original character seemed like a 3-D character who will have arcs and conflicts while the redesign felt like a stereotypical character with a story arc/plot you could guess easily
This video has been so important to me, despite not wanting to be a professional in art and just treating it as a hobby, I always rewatch this whenever I make a design and it's been such a helpful guide to make my work look a lot better!
Um... I think generally it's okay to use multiple shapes in a design! Just of a pie, majority of the slices (like 60-50%, but can depend on style) should be dedicated to one shape. Like Sora (who was in the video!!!); His design mostly consists of round circular shapes due to his clothing and face, but his famous keyblade consists of squares and his hair!!!!! Is literally full of triangles!!! If we dumbed it down to percentages instead of strict dedication to one shape, Sora would be around 60% circle, 25% square, and 15% triangle. It's also worth noting if themes contradict each other. That's okay! Especially if you want to make, like, a traitor character? Have them be all round and friendly and bright colored, but BAM and they're evil
Yep, in Joopies' video (which they recommended) mentioned about using a big iconic shape instead of sticking to just one. The percentage you wrote is how I'd see it. And for the last part, that contradiction is what makes it interesting yet effective. Their design *purposely* trick you to believe they're friendly and cute, making you automatically lump them into a design stereotype but turns out: They're not what they look like. Then again, design is subjective and it depends on the story or how you view it.
@@tomemeornottomeme1864 well the point wasn't about it being good looking or not. Whether or not it's appealing is for another video, this was just showing how to make a character more recognizable, not making it look good. Though I agree they could've made it look better.
@@doopyman the redesign was literally just a princess peach copy. you can even see them "referencing" her in the new design. aside from the color scheme, which i agree should be a bit tweaked, the original design is far better imho
You know, something about this video always bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what. Now I know: you’ve left out the most important part of character design: the purpose. This video really only focuses on the appearance or style of a character design without considering who the character is or what their purpose is. At the beginning you list important things for a character design: silhouette, palette, and exaggeration. And yet you don’t even talk about intention or personality or character. In the redesigns, it seems your only concern is on the technical and the theory, and you just throw out the character, purpose, and soul. For god’s sake, a femme fatale is meant to be dangerously sexy, not just dangerous! It’s like no consideration was put into the actual communication of concepts and ideas and everything was just theory. You took the character out of the character designs!
I completely agree with you, but I don’t think the video is bad by any means. Any person who learns from this video and ends up being a good artist because of it will also know about what your comment pointed out. Art is a skill that in part develops with the person that makes it. To oversimplify things, imagine it like a video game where you can level a character’s stats. In order to learn how to use a knife in the kitchen to properly cut ingredients, you need to level up things like hand-eye coordination, patience, observation. Obviously this sort of thing isn’t something you can numerically measure I’m just giving a crude example because it’s the same for art. And art is unique because there isn’t a specific stat level up requirement, multiple different kinds of combinations of stats will help you make art, the difference being is that the kind of art you make will be different. That’s how styles are born, and they even touch on this in the video itself. Grave of the Fireflies’s story would be a horrible fit in South Park’s art style if your goal is to deeply emotionally resonate with the audience, because otherwise you just insulted the tragic history of another nation which, to be fair, South Park is notorious for being very crude and offensive so no new lines have been broken here haha. They definitely could have presented the re-designs in a different light though, since the title and wording within the video passively implies that the re-designs are objectively better based on a guideline forged from observations of other good character designs. Your takeaway from the video shouldn’t be the improved designs, it should be “there isn’t a rule for what makes a design good or bad, it depends on the story you want to tell and the style you want to tell it in, here are some common similarities between good character designs, make of it what you will”.
This. Absolutely this. This video bugged me a lot when i first saw it, and this comment made me realize why. The designs seem to loose all personality/change it completely. For example in the dog princess one, the character went from being a seemingly impressionable and positive princess, to being another generic cheery princess.
it's the hair and face, I think. the remake loses the sort of young, stubbornly headstrong yet kind at heart vibe I'm getting. definitely because of the lack of circles, a blend of triangles and circles would have been much better imo. it's a good design and a good demonstration, but it's not the same character as the original.
I remember I designed a character for my DnD campaign and I showed the character to all my friends and all of them loved the design and character itself. it was my first attempt at designing a character in a long time so it was a very nice feeling!
so, a couple things to start off, yes, i am aware that this video is over a year old now, and that this comment will likely just get lost in the sea of more liked comments. that's fine, it's not like i'm saying anything revolutionary in this comment, just speaking my mind now. before i get into the brunt of it, i would say this video is a fairly good video if you're going for the style it proposes. it goes over good and basic theories that at least seem stable. it presents what feels like a good reason that mainstream media characters are so popular at the beginning of the video it was stated that good and bad character design is subjective, dependent on context, viewer, etc. completely, 100% agree. in most cases, when a character is first made, it seems like good character design to its creator. the creator's view on the design on the character is entirely subject to change, but that's sorta off-topic for what i'm getting at here. my point is, first it was stated as subjective, then for the rest of the video it was treated as objective "so marth, what's your main problem with the points the creators bring up?" it's entirely focused on making a character a. basic and b. unique. while in some cases this works well, for example some of the media referred to in the video, in others it doesn't quite work as well. imagine a tv series whose setting is a dystopian future focused around uniformity. i would argue that to better illustrate this bleak timeline, the characters follow this uniformity with their basic design. however, once you get further than skin-deep, you start learning more about these characters and their widely different personalities despite their concretely uniform designs. an excellent example of media in which uniqueness would not work well basicness is bland. yes, this is vastly more of an opinionated point than the last one, but i would argue that basicness is bland. it discourages adding small details that give a glimpse into a character's head, their past, their personality. perhaps the original design for a character includes a watch given to them by their deceased grandfather or a necklace with an intricate pendant signifying their religion. from what this video says, it would seem like to make the character better, you would have to remove these keepsakes, essentially stripping away an important piece of a character's personality some of the redesigns in the video seem fairly ignorant to the intended designs i felt from the originals. the fish pirate at the beginning originally gave me a tomboy antihero vibe while her redesign just felt like the antagonist's slut. the sparkledog princess seemingly lost all personality and became furry princess peach. the character that the video creators shat on at the beginning went from (inspect it yourself, you'll see what i mean) divine ruler of casinos to some basic cardfighting magician man one last issue i had with the video (which, mind, is extremely nitpicky) is that with many of the redesigns, important aspects of the characters where mirrored. before i receive comments telling me that all of the mirroring is intentional and part of the redesigns, i point toward the sparkledog princess. the redesign and the finished piece are inconsistent after i finished the video, i decided to scroll through the comments to see if people had caught the things i had caught, and a comment by Clean Water clenched my heart and nearly squeezed a tear from my eye: "me who found a style and feeling confident in art, actually likes a lot of the drawings now I make after video: oh.." this video, i fear, will tell passionate artists that their work is shit, and to make it good they need to stick with what's mainstream. tl;dr, while this video can be useful, please don't let your passion die because you differ from the norm. keep making what makes you happy.
thank you for this comment! i really have just started drawing and i find it fun, and i tried to not watch tutorials online to avoid swaying my own experience and making it harder to enjoy. i understand this video was meant to be for ppl who want a career in this, but still they had so many points that really took all the fun out of the character designing i do.
To people who prefer the original drawings: a lot of what these guys are saying comes from an animation point of view where the character needs to be redrawn and recognized in a variety of circumstances, rather than just a piece of art. Most of what they are saying stands true for both circumstances, but that might be why you don’t lie the redraw.
I completely rolled over the animation part of their intro and outro I was wondering why everything was feeling kinda off! I was just about to comment that i don’t like the redesign but still consider their advice good, now i know why i was feeling like that, i don’t like their style because it’s made to be repeated and plain, i was wondering why it was getting a bit more boring in the redesign, they are professional animators, not particularly illustrators, so i really appreciate their Advice and examples as animation advice now, instead of plain drawing or pure design
I'd say this was true for me for only the first one. The redraw is great and gives off a much more recognizable vibe, but I also really like the original for it's complexity and keeping the round features. Imo, so long as you use no more than 2 different shapes in the design and balance them, the character design can still look good. Like how in the first one, the body had rounder features and the clothes were pointier. Even then, there were still some curves in the clothing and sharp edges in the body, making for a seamless combination of the shape language. If both shapes were in stark contrast, they'd clash and start to not make sense.
I mean I think the remade drawings improved some of the aspects but they were too different, so that they’re kinda missing the original vibes people were trying to give
Also important to mention that they aren't saying draw exactly like them but to take notes from aspects of their art and apply it to your style. Use consistent shapes, make sure your colours compliment one another instead of competing to be more dominant and exaggerated proportions and facial expressions can add to comedic effect.
There were some really good tips in here, with a lot of good information, but I felt like many of the redesigns ended up with things lost in translation, or completely changed the intent of the original drawings. I liked the original design better for the pirate, after they defined the silhouette more, but I think they lost a lot of the personality of the character when they completely redefined her. She went from looking like a fun, some what lovable villain who probably has a lot of flair and charismatic ego (sort of a Don Carnage ala Duck Tales remake) to a rather generic, sexy female pirate villain who probably only barks cold orders to her crew and leaves you wishing there was more to her character. They also got rid of a lot of the simple, yet interesting details that made her fun to look at. The new design has an interesting face, but the rest of her details leave it looking bland and forgettable. The Dog design is adorable though. But I wouldn't have given her a crown and elements that look quite so much like Princess Peach. The shape is good, but she looks like she goes to the same dress maker. XD The demon one is more striking in it's technical appearance, but I think the joke kind of got lost.... The big demon doesn't look stupid, he looks like a smart guy trapped in the body of a weight lifter. The expression of being perplexed is gone. The man also now no longer looks smug and like he's enjoying the demon's bafflement, but only looks like he's dictating from the book. Instead of a man stumping a demon, they are now a duo of a demon and human team pouring over demonic legislature. xp
I guess they did this as examples, like, when you want to make the character look like somehing an people thinks another thing from them. Also, in the draw of the devil and the guy you can see that at least it keeps some of the original one: the devil trying to understand what he's reading and the guy looking more smart than the devil
I don't think a lot of things in his video were very helpful like shape language should not be something that you have to use with every character maybe with some characters but not with all characters like what the pirate girl you're completely correct they basically took her design found it down the old it and then Stripped Away anything that made her unique it just made a carbon copy of pirate characters, idk i feel like they purposely did things just to match with their opinions of what we should be using in art are like with shapes triangles always being associated with evil villains and cuz they have sharp edges and squares always being associated with Bruce and dumb down buff characters and circles always being happy and go lucky well just take a look at Cartman from South Park Cartman is a bad character who's basically just a circle with legs and is a horrible person but yet he's a circle with legs and there might be characters out there that have more pointed edges and sharp edges like a triangle but could be very soft people and there could be characters out there that are modeled after squares that are actually very intelligent
I guess the purpose is to teach you some very useful visual design tools. Here, they only exagerrated more common features to illustrate common archetype-fitting, but you can play around with it by emphasizing any feature that is important for defining the character. There is more to it than just the tools they mentioned: for example, there is also an additional S "shape", sort of resembling a snake, that one of the character enhancements they had in the lineup used. Yet, the principles they convey in teaching you this give you more control to enhance your character and understanding the impact simplicity/complexity will have on your end viewer. Essentially, exagerration/simplification is a good way to communicate one or two main idea about the character, then play around with it in the story by augmenting that characteristic (character shape matches function, for clear reading) or contradicting it (making a "book doesn't match it's cover" argument, sort of like with Hunback of Notre Dame). The second one is clearly riskier, because if you don't make it an essential element of your story, you risk bringing in too much detail and obfuscating the main points of your story. It should only be done for dynamic, complex, or thematic characters. Otherwise, simplicity reigns supreme. On the other hand, if some feature is a key point to your story, then it can be a really fun thing to play around with or embed subtle messages inside. Like with the pirate: her triangles indicated her as a villain, but the circles/curves indicated that she also has a softer side too. Balancing the two gave a more nuanced impression, that could be tackled in whatever story she appeared in: maybe deadly or villaneous one moment, forgiving or merciful the next. Or maybe the message is reversed: she is often kind, but contains hidden edges inside, a quiet, sharp power, that reveals itself in serious moments. I do, however, agree that a lot of their modifications changed the message or spirit of the characters, but they did that for a purpose: they were "simplifying" the shape/color principles they knew by only showing us a few simplified key elements, in order to make them more easily understandable to us. And, funnily enough, this "simplicity" idea was exactly the message they were trying to pass down to us. It's cool when form matches function, and this is a concept that crops up in virtually any form of communication. Though ofc, you can see the downsides here. There's a reduced ability to pass on complicated messages. And yet, the message is likely to be recieved and remembered better for its simplicity. It's all a tradeoff. A cartoon tends towards greater simplicity of characterization; large books like Robin Hobb's tend to express complexity focused around a few central ideas. Which one you prefer depends on your point, and your medium. Since visual design forms only one argument for your characterization, there are a lot of tricks you can pull in combo with your storyline/backstory in order to develop a good, solid character. tldr: Simplicity has it's role, but has tradeoffs with portraying naunce. The video only shows basic principles in order to give you more tools in expressing your characters/story via visual design. Your actual story is what defines the actual purpose of that visual design.
Makes me think of that scene in Dead Poets Society where they rip out the first chapter of the textbook. Nothing wrong with following the strict rubric the author proposed to add style, but upholding it as the only valid option robs an artist of unique creative potential and individual expression.
This video has some very good advice, but it also feels a bit restrictive. For example, shape theory is a good tool for character design, but it’s not the end all be all. Just remember, good art is any art that works. As long as your art achieves the effect you’re aiming for to the best of its ability, then it doesn’t matter how many rules you break along the way.
I feel like they went too crazy with the whole shape thing. Sure, use shapes to portray your character a certain way, but you dont have to transform a humanoid into a geometric nightmare to portray personality-
Yeah, I feel like this video and it’s examples hindered me in my art development, because when I watched this, I was young, and trying to figure out how to make a good character design, since I was just getting started. But this made me think that to have shape language, I had to give my characters big obvious shapes like they did. I had no idea how to use shapes properly until I started watching Lavandertowne’s videos and seeing how she uses shapes in a more natural way
@@mangledfoxy2052 you're not really supposed to look at this unless you want to make animation, or comics. These designs don't flow very nicely into animation.
They did give quite a few good tips, just not everyone will go with an exaggerated, cartoony style. I prefer going with a more anatomically-fitting type of style.
Something i discovered is how the GTA games managed to make the main characters recognisable with only using clothing. Like you can recognize cj by his white tank top and blue jeans, tommy with his tropical jacket and jeans, claude with his black jacket and green pants, niko and his tracksuit, ect.
I feel like a lot of people forgot about the disclaimer: character design is subjective. If you don’t like their redesigns, that’s totally cool! These are, however the steps to creating a recognizable and iconic character, and if that’s not your goal, that’s all good. You don’t have to do any of this, but they are really helpful suggestions and offer some guidance.
yeah i think some might have missed that. The author ( i guess) is talking about being iconic, not every character should be iconic. unless you wanna make the next mickey mouse or something.
@@AbdallahTeach absolutely. not everyone wants to create a kids cartoon character that will be recognizable for the next 50 years. subtlety and realism could work in a visual novel, for example, where you wouldn't think of proportional human bodies looking like monochromatic circles
Not really. The redesign at 4:14 doesn't even accomplish any of the things the narration claims it does, let alone make it look better. The silhouette isn't any more distinctive, and the triangle shape motif doesn't come through even if I know to look for it. If they hadn't told me she was supposed to "instantly read as a dangerous femme fatale" I would have no idea what they were going for at all.
You know what's terrifying, is when someone has an over-detailed character like the example for a bad character design, and they can animate it super well anyway- Like bruh, who has the time foR THIS
The redesign of the fish lady... egh. Did you guys just forget the human form is made up of multiple shapes, or...? Like what else are you supposed to do with a torso in that pose than two rectangles - not even that, rhombuses, basically the halfway between rectangles and triangles. Everything about the redesign's proportions look uncomfortable to exist in, and your read of the character was incredibly different than the shape language already being used. Perhaps the circles in the body represented a soft nature, and the triangles in the clothing represented a more bold attitude, eh? Also silhouettes aren't quite as important as this makes them out to be. A good design should be readable in silhouette when they're posed for it, but not every pose has to look like your character is posing for a camera, arms outstretched to the sides. Especially in more realistic works you're gonna have to let them overlap to do basic things like hold a cup of coffee or sit cross-legged, and doing that doesn't negate the readability of the design whatsoever. We have lines and color for a reason, with good use of them you won't need to have an interesting silhouette 100% of the time. They also oversell the importance of palettes by being dishonest in the presentation of them. They present the palettes of casts, not individual characters, arranged in the order they appear vertically, even repeating them sometimes like with Bert and Ernie. That's not a palette, you've basically just stretched the characters really wide and then cut out a slice of each. If you showed me the yellow and red of Winnie the Pooh without the extra yellow underneath to make the red look like a shirt, that would tell me nothing.
I sorta feel like they ruined the cartoony style of that drawing and made it worse in my opinion. The facial expression just doesn’t look right and pose is a tad off.
Well he comes out and says that despite all his experience and knowledge... he doesn't have a perfect magic recipe for success: only guidelines to help make things more likely to work out. Don't like the style? That's always gonna happen. The real point was to achieve certain goals with the character so that it could be animated. The previous character was, frankly, too complex. I think you ARE right though and that character wasn't done being worked on.
I genuinely love how well they snuck in that one drawing around 15 mins in, to the point literally no one so far in comments have even considered that being something to laugh about 😂, all seriousness, as a upcoming artist and animator, these are very helpful tips, I had a similar idea but this really helped me open my mind to variety of how to start off and points I never thought of, so awesome, to anyone also viewing this, goodluck, we both have alot of stress to go through ;---; thanks for helping, thanks for readIng 🤣
Nah it’s the most replayed part lol. Ppl just have a lot of criticism about the points made in the video that they’d rather talk about that over whatever the hell my eyes bore witness to
4:15 Most of this video I agree on, it's really helpful. But for the "improved" drawing, it just kind of feels like they got rid of a lot of character in the original artwork. Sure, trying to stick to one shape to make it look better is fine, but they just.... took so much of the good stuff out.
Not only that, but look at how fucked the anatomy is on the rework, it goes from "yeah, this is a little weird but I've seen enough rule34 for it to make sense" to "Yeah, her leg is broken" and "You totally forgot about the bottom half and drew it later, didn't you?". That's not taking into account how they made a phantom of the opera mask into face paint and bracers into glvoes.
I've seen a lot of people saying in the comments "I didn't like this redesign" when actually the purpose of the video is not to make likeable characters or prettty ones, its purpose is to teach how to express a certain personality or feeling in a character so it's easy to understand at a first glance to the viewer, it's almost obvious you aren't going to like some of the designs, especially the "villain" ones
okay but that's not why people are mad, they're mad that in the video they're saying this is a bad character design but instead of fixing the design (which btw is a different art style) they change the design of the character completely from what looks to be a mysterious heroine to a complete Cruella Deville type of villain. Also that whole color theory nonsense and the fact that they basically say if it's not the way they like it or the art style they use it's "bad design" when art style is a huge factor and different designs resonate with different people, for instance a lot of people in the comment section liked the pirate girls original design so saying it's bad when it's objectively not insults everyone who likes that design.
I want to point out that shape language doesn’t apply to just people. I mean, that’s evident in the clothing in the character design, but it can be used in A LOT of things. You could have a bouncy, round motorcycle, or a really square one that looks stable and safe, or a spiky triangular one that’s fast. If you want, the furniture in someone’s room could be full of shape language. Even more so, you can find rich shape language in the onomatopoeia found in Japanese manga. Shape can be applied to words too! Be creative and apply shape language to new things!
Totally agree as well. Art styles heavily veering on realism that also use lots of extra details as they’re going to be 3D animated wouldn’t benefit much from this advice. (Not my style but similar.)
@@cherry6255 these tips can be translated to a realistic style; facial structure, body type, hair, clothing, etc, can be influenced by shape language. The color pallet tips can be shown through clothing, skin color, eye color, and hair color. Etc etc etc, posture, body language, whatever you can think of.
Agree. I liked the original middle east one cause it was bouncy. Now it looks like generic nickelodeon lol. It's nice. But it just lost the artist style
@@ButWhyMe... Basically...think about it like it technically is, they took surface level art tropes used on, mostly, simplistically designed characters, shoved them into more complex designs, and exaggerated them until it hardly resembled the original design For instance, the first design became a geometric nightmare and what you'd probably think is a scrapped 90's Disney villain, when that wasn't the point The second design literally used Princess Peach as a base, and it showed in the final design! He got rid of their cape, changed their art style, and made their dress comically poofy...when the point was supposed to be color separation, and then proceeded to essentially call the old ones "bad designs" (by the title) and their redesigns *better* (also by the title)
I mean, I feel like they put more effort in saying their designs are *objectively* better than the contrary, which feels very..."non-artsy" anyways, yea?
![Smoother animation ≠ Better animation [read description]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_KRb_qV9P4g/mqdefault.jpg)
I feel like people are kind of missing the point, saying that BaM's redesigns are uglier. BaM deliberately overexaggerated their designs to make their point clear. Sure, I preferred the original squid girl, but the point of the exercise wasn't to make her more appealing, it was to show how shape language changes a design. Of course in a real character design you could pull back on that, maybe include some more circular shapes to combine "friendly" and "speedy", but BaM was starting at level 1 and showing how *one shape* can exaggerate a design.
Ignore the grumbly comments, BaM. This video has been really helpful for me and I'm sure many other artists feel the same!
TBH Everyone have different ways or tips or tricks on How they make their character I guess
Then they probably shouldn't have said the new design was meant to be the improved version.
Still, advice was good.
Ah, manipulation at it's best.
Even at the end they say that they have no idea of what makes a good character design, telling us that there isn’t only one way to design a character or definitive way to
I understand. My art got criticized so much i stopped showing people. Though i am trying to start digital amination to show people they cant make me stop drawing because they dont like my style
"Red might feel dangerous and sexy."
Elmo: *hi*
Chaos Controlled
Elmo: “Elmo loves you! Hahaha!”
Some person: “Damn Elmo, you’re such a player 😳😏”
It's like the cursed photo meme.
elmo in hell = danger
elmo on bed= sexy
damn, that's accurate.
exactly
*draw Elmo holding a bloody knife behind you.*
*E-ELMO KUN*
"Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety"
Ah yes shrek makes me feel very safe
to be fair
he DOES actually make me feel safe
i'm being completely unironic here
He feels safe in his green swamp maybe?? 😂
@@ponponpatapon9670 honestly you're a legend for saying that
Mad respect bro
But of course Shrek makes you feel safe. Shrek is love. Shrek is life.
*Shrek is love Shrek is life flashbacks*
"Let's take a look at bad character design."
Me: *questions every character I've ever drawn*
Fiddle Flixx I felt the same
Joseph O'Malley same
Fiddle Flixx same ;-;
*me looks at my DnD person*
:(
Mood
So what I learned from this is
1. Put a bunch of shapes together to make a silhouette
2. Make sure the silhouette has defined features to make it stand out
3. Color contrast is important on both the characters and the characters with the background
3. Make it somewhat simplistic but not too much
4. Exaggerate poses but again not too much
5. All kinds of body types are good
6. Draw more shapes to make more interesting characters
7. Draw line ups (with variety)
8. Use references
9. Also good palettes
10. Story is important when going with different styles
just keep in mind that they overexagurated shape language in this video to properly show it, You dont need to be a bunch of triangles smashed togheter. A good example of shape language is the wolf from Puss in boots the last wish. He has alot of triangles in his design without being over the top. Mostly, your design should have shapes, but not be made of shapes, if that makes sense
The odd one is out: Ya sure?
Are you trying to be sardonic? Im asking seriously?
@@LS-ti1rz nah, at least I don't think I was
"Characters rarely stand in a bright white room"
Me: *laughs in traditional art sketchbook*
*cries in never uses colors*
It is so true
@@SocksWithSandalsEnjoyer haha same :')
@@kyleag86 i thought i was the only one-- hi 😌♥️
also in gravity falls, which the onscreen characters are from, one of the most epic scenes takes place in a bright white room.
"That's my art style-san"
Shots fired lol
Is this som kind of personal attak or somthing??
@Mather The only way to learn is to acknowledge the call-out and change
Sounds like it is a slap to the face SPECIALLY dedicated to weebs
Lol
@Mather If you are never constructively critisized in your art, how will you see your mistakes?
"while red might feel dangerous and sexy"
* Looks at Po from teletubbies *
* Po from teletubbies looks back at you and nods *
*wiggles eyebrows*
He's dangerous tho
@@smileyfacegr6691 po is a girl
@@franciscop.garcia9931 Woops! 😫
Also, why did I say _he_ when I meant _they_ ? I never wandered if the teletubbies had genders or not 😶
Character design is very subjective! That's so important to remember when designing.
winged canvas!! hiii i love ur videosss
@@KIKURAsky Awwe, thanks!
oh! a wild wingedcanvas appeared
EXACTLY !!
"Triangles give off dangerous and edgy feelings"
Phineas: *MMMMMMMMMPH*
Ikr
He was a dorito boy
She said: 'Watcha Doin?'
ua-cam.com/video/aosWoTbEUmw/v-deo.html
@@drawnwithlove3499 a....avril lavigne fan?
There will always be exceptions and this rule is no exception. Best to find the value in the generalizations.
"Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety"
**Looks at Hulk*
he protects the city
@@lapiswolf2780 Exactly
@@lapiswolf2780 violently...
@@adaliawright6891 In the same way that *Godzilla* does! ^_^
Creeper
8:26 yes Elmo comes across as dangerous and sexy
His old voice actor especially...OOF.
I don't know about you but I find Elmo to be quite *Menacing*
E. Norma Stitz lol you HAD to say it 😂🤣😅
Don’t he though?
@@erfanthered9801 He knows were you live
15:44 THE WAY MY JAW DROPPED AFTER SUCH A FAMILY FRIENDLY VIDEO
lol, same fr
Lmao wasn't expecting that. It came out of left field
FR
FR!!!
And he was standing in the fricking zoo 😭
“Characters rarely stand in a bright white room”
Manga artist: _Yeah, about that..._
why do you think they say "rarely"?
Yeah but mangas aren’t colored oof
that's why sometime they have to give the character an aura when standing in a detailed setting, so the characters won't get consumed by the background
They use value
@@uhgooditskay5429 and why do you think they say RARELY? lmao
"triangles give off dangerous and edgy feelings."
the play button: e d g y n o i s es
bill cipher: my time has come
I feel like every polygon is edgy but thatsjustmeidunnoman
what about phinease? from phinease and ferb.
AAAH DORITO SCARY
My mind when I hear triangles: *Bill Cipher and Peridot*
"Color tells the story"
Manga: *allow me to introduce myself*
allow me to intoduce you Nosferatu
Land of the lustrous, ah yes
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure:
let's get *Funky*
Yes
Let's turn that language on it's head
The character reveal at 4:10 was a sin to my eyes compared to the original drawing, it felt like I was staring into the sun.
LMAO 😂 "my eyes!!"
IKR?
They made her look like an angry old lady! But I think that was the point by using the shape. Maybe if they used a different shape then she would’ve looked better
they gave her the "plastic surgery gone wrong" look
@@inferno__boi... Fr
"Check your backgrounds, characters don't normally stand in a white room"
My characters: *laughs in asylum*
LOL XD
My characters: *drinking coffee in a staff room in hell* "hm?"
Honestly I have a some characters that are just black and white, honestly idk how I’ll make a sillhouette of it
what about Pocoyo..
@ISABELLA ABALOS let's sent u a letter, to come back home to play
Red: dangerous and sexy
Mr Krabs - *Hey ladies~*
Lol
“WELL THESE CLAWS AINT JUST FOR ATTRACTING MATES!”
@@mittycommitspizzatime92 3 words my friend 3 words
"Plankton and mr krab hardcore coop Cock and Ball Torture (parachute, ball stretcher, kickings, hot)"
Scarlet Witch: Hi
are u feeling it now mr krabs
“Red might feel dangerous and sexy”
Me: “sees a figure of lighting McQueen”
_I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE_
What about Clifford 😳
Mr Krabs tho 👀
*K A C H O W*
__TOO LATE__
Mr krabs i- 😳😳😳
"This fan-submitted artwork is good but has a few problems that makes it look bad, so we will fix a few of those!"
*proceeds to change their entire personality, artstyle and shape*
Dam
I honestly think that's good.
I'm an artist myself and I would rather have a "Good job but this is horrible let's fix it together" than a "yeah it's cool." then nothing more.
We need criticism to improve don't we.
Edit: Coming back to this I realized how much this character was changed. The original design surely gave it a pleasing look, the new one does seem way too different. A way too strong change to the original charm the character gave.
@@oldchannelawhellnah yeah, but that doesn't mean one must mutilate your characters to appease some assholes online. The original fish girl was fine, they had no right to turn it into a cubist monstocity.,
@@themadoneplays7842 I mean yeah but if I'm not wrong that was just an example of how simple shapes can completely change a character, I'm not sure if they were actually suggesting these changes for the original design
@@oldchannelawhellnahThat's not a fix. It's a do-over. That's like if you went to the doctor with a broken arm and his solution was to amputate the arm and attach a prosthetic.
"red gives you dangerous and sexy"
me: if red is sexy, than why is shrek _green?_
Wyntryx 😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐 I won’t say anything about your personal fetish
😂
K-arooni Seruce its a joke theres no way..
@@k-arooniseruce3140 people don't actually think shrek is sexy bro. It's a meme. We still love shrek though
Cause he lives
in
a
frickin
Swamp
A great way to make your character look dangerous is to;
A. Make them out of triangles.
B. GIVE THEM A BIG ASS SWORD.
About B, *thinks about Cloud from FF7*
@jonevat 77 when I see him in smash I’m like “oh shit” so it’s accurate
Pyramid head.
Pyramid Head.
All i can think of is Lio fotia
15:44 imagine people on this zoo like:
oh, he is drawing the animals! thats so cool! what is this looking li- oh my god
Estevão Ucceli it’s call yiff...
Yiffinhell
I really hope there was no children in that zoo...
Limom3 yes there is. Only that the location was switched before it showed the drawing...
@@Eepop_stuffs that subreddit declined so much in quality so now it's just gone down to "haha furman bad".
Visit r/furry instead!
2:48 conflates clarity of pose in silhouette with clarity of character in silhouette. There was nothing wrong with the character's silhouette before and was completely recognizable due to the tail, pointed arm bands, tentacles, and hat. I would wager that in a line up of silhouetted characters, she'd be distinct as is.
the "fix" makes her pose more clear, but doesn't do much to define her character silhouette any more than before (and it makes her look a bit more alien, which slightly chipped away at her appeal). Her pose is also pretty unnatural looking now, as an added "bonus".
And it's been mentioned in the comments plenty, but the "shape language" redesign completely butchered the appeal of the original design; so much so that I wouldn't call them the same character... if anything, it proved that combining shapes together can make a much more appealing character than dogmatically adhereing to a single shape.
Just look at a few of the examples givin leading up to that redesign: Sonic in composed of triangles, and circles, the old man from up is mostly square but has a round nose, Wreck it Raplh is overly square but has rounded edges and a round jaw, Aku has almost no triangles in his head and is comprised of rectangles and circles, Batman has triangle eyes, but is mostly boxy with his jaw and shoulders, spiderman in the example is much more round than angular. The shape language bit completely missed the nuance for a dogmatic rule of shapes when it comes to character design.
This entire video is kind of sloppy like that.
I agree. I want to believe they meant well, but any aspiring artist who takes this advice is probably going to end up in a worse spot for having done so.
Every character given looked good in their own right, and yes polish was needed but there was still appeal. After they showed the "improved version" each character felt derivative.
Cute dog princess becomes a princess Peach clone.
Fun pirate captain girl becomes ugly sea witch.
Smart lawyer and dumb demon become pretentious lawyer and ugly demon.
Seriously, everything just became so darn ugly for the most part.
I think they did make it clearer but her character was skewed and essence became something different.
Wow it’s almost like people see art differently than you, mind blowing I know.
The second design reads waaaay more clearly. The first character is made up of more round shapes, making her looking cuter and more approachable, but then her expression and attire read "bad guy." The second design is very clearly meant to be a dangerous villain and unapproachable. By removing the rounded shapes, there is a much more obvious direction for what the character is supposed to be.
@@Bobathan20 Wow it's almost like there is no bad art even though there are shit tons of them
“Or extroverted” *proceeds to show picture of jesus*
Brazil being extroveted actually makes sense
**proceeds to show picture of Jesus T-posing*
@@vixenkarma5670, Why of course he's T-Posing given Jesus's overpowered dominance!
Jesus is as most extroverted as you can get
*Face palms*
"Is your character feminine, or masculine?"
Araki: Yes.
BlueberryBoy 11 Araki: Not sure but watch them p o s e
koichi pose
Your next line will be:"iS ThAt A JOjO ReFErEnCe?"
I THOUGHT THE SAME THING HAHA
@Social Life w-we a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-also don't t-t-talk like th-this in r-real life
Red = dangerous and sexy
Red tetris piece: oh yeah
please stop you are scaring me
Fingy Stingy this comment is cursed
Oh no it’s the square cool aids man
Kool aid Man be like
I recently downloaded Tetris during this season of quarantine we're in. lol
I feel like the redesign of the demon and human lost the whole idea of its comedic value. The original had the demon looked surprised while the human looks to the demon with a smug look as if the human managed to fool the demon. Now have the demon just focused on looking at his scroll while the human focuses on reading out loud from his book and it generates a sense of seriousness, which isn't bad at all. However, it takes away the comedic personality the original was trying to convey and plus the comedic value from the original focuses on the facial expressions, thus a full body wouldn't really be necessary. (Yes, I saw a comment that mentioned about this and I fully agreed.)
However, I felt the idea of exaggerating the body shapes of both the human and demon does help improve the drawing in some aspects. A very nice contrast between the two, nonetheless.
Why would your animated character be a realistic human who lives on a regular house, when he can be a yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
That is what my teacher once said to me.
I loved this comment so much I read it at least three times.
simpsons?
@@Timsturbs *Yellow humans xD
That's a great point, you should make sure to repeat it to as many growing artists as you can!
Möhinder Pictures he lives on a pineapple? Interesting
I thought he lived inside a pineapple
“i’m never going to flip the canvas while i draw so everything will be awkwardly leaning to one side” i feel personally attacked
I mean, I never do it either and that's not something I ever seem to have an issue with. Usually, your characters are intentionally leaning to a side anyway.
Lmao and i *just* found out you can do that
I draw on paper, do I have to make a copy on the back or?
@@Rodrigo-br8qe i usually try to draw the frame of their body an of how i want them positioned and then follow that frame as closely as possible when fleshing them out
@@Rodrigo-br8qe For people that care to do it, they usually check with mirrors.
“Characters rarely stand in a bright white room”
UA-cam animators: I’m about to end this men whole career
Lmao
Bruh,love ure two faced life
Yup i do that all the time :')
*I d o t h a t*
AS AN ANIMATOR THIS HAD ME CRYYYYING ✋🏻😂
As an Eastern artist, I find Eastern and Western take different approach when it comes to animation. Eastern character design can be unanimous in body shapes(as you mentioned here), but they shine through exaggerated movement and animation. Western character designs are very shape oriented. So they have so many exciting wacky shapes, but when it comes to actual animation, they are really boring to look at with little exaggeration and depth to their movement. I think it boils down to how easier it is to figure out movements of a character that is unanimous or akin to average human body than super exaggerated stylized characters.
Both do have their outliers tho. Like One Piece's exaggerated designs and Old Disney's magnificent and fluid animation.
I agree.
I wonder if it has something to do with differences in western individualist and eastern collective societies.
It's also not strictly true that Western animation is stiff. The manic comic animation of the Looney Tunes of the 40s is still alive today even with simple designs. Depends on the show.
I think of Anime as pretty static much of the time until there's an action scene. There's a difference in division of labor.
"Red might feel dangerous and sexy"
*Red Lego brick* : *plastic noises*
10/10 anal beads
Plastic noises LMAO
Something tells me there are a lot of these
Moists plastic
especially dangerous. especially
“We associate yellow with joy and happiness”
Hm yes DIO is very happy and joyful
I mean, he laughs often
@@hypnoskales7069 true
Colour theory seems to take less priority compared to character designs
Spongebob
i mean he did look like he took joy in making johnathan and jotaro's lives hell
Shape language be like: the death star is your friend!
Ah yes the planet destroying sphere is my friend
HAHA XD
everyone, go hug an electrode!
This comment is sponsored by the Imperial propaganda division.
The Death Star ain’t a character tho
“Green is gonna give you a feeling of safety”
*shows kermit and shrek on screen*
LOL
Well who's even scared of those two?
Shrek is daddy 😫
**Sad Piccolo noises**
Buttercup be like: 🤨
They really called out how the original lion king was better lol
This one? - - - > 15:43
@@plaguedoki27 my eyes...
@@plaguedoki27 yo.... why..
It was xD although the live action designs in that part was good it's just the emotion was gone do to the lack of expression.
@@bloodymoon7315 i disagree. there’s no personality in the live action designs. nothing to make them stand out. they all end up looking like the same character.
"...and that doesn't mean just browsing through Pinterest"
this is a callout
Tbh I feel attacked
You know what's funny ? My art teacher used to tell us to go on Pinterest every single time we attended her classes. She never taught us anything.
@@CUTIE_POXX Just further presses the point that school is kind of pointless when there are those teachers who don't really teach anything in class themselves, instead only relying on textbooks or website for referencing the course curriculum. It all just matters only the discipline of the students who care to go to research beyond what's taught in the class.
Actually, Pinterest can be an amazing source of, not only art, but art advice. I find content just like the stuff in this video, and I find a lot of artists who show off their character design exercises, that have been drawn with a proper character design formula- really inspiring.
But the thing is, you have to scratch the surface of art Pinterest if you really want to find the 'better' stuff. One click on an anime girl in cute clothes and it's all you'll see, unless you search for the other stuff.
Your right? Huh~
Triangle: Edgness, danger, intensity
Show's Bill Cypher whose literal character design is a corn chip XD
Ikr XD
I think that corn chips feel pretty dangerous when they stab the roof of my mouth when I bite into them
Crevettola even worse when it gets stuck in your gums
#verifyvenuz
Do you mean Razzle Dazzle Dorito?
I'm a multimedia arts student and this video is literally EVERYTHING we've been studying for the first few semesters. I genuinely reference some of their philosophies because this is how it's taught to us as well, and I guess BaM makes it easier for me to remember.
Art is genuinely subjective but I think the flak really comes from the idealism of Western animation lol. It's also important to note that these are character designs for animation. The redesigns are "improved" so that 1) it's easier to animate, 2) it's easier to advance the storyline, 3) it's easier to remember how to draw them when referenced.
Shape language doesn't only convey personality but it's technical that we can actually reference to them when in-betweening, storyboarding, all that.
channel: *talks about layers, flipping the canvas etc.*
Me: *laughs in sketchbook*
I scrolled all the way down through the comments just to find someone who said this! I personally use tracing paper to amend this issue (not a 100% fix, but it can make things a lot more balanced when it's supposed to be), but I do all my art by hand rather than digitally, so I don't have the fancy techniques like photoshop, so when it gets down to the illustration portion of a design, I only have 1 chance to get the color down right, because there's no take backs afterwards 😅
Its always useful to use a mirror for this!
Put your sketch in front of a Mirror to check de proportions
@ ALL 3 OF YOU, LOL XD
I hold the paper up to a light and turn it around to see it flipped and it helps me catch lots of mistakes. You can also take a picture with your phone and flip that. And the mirror works, too, like Catalina said! I really like to scan works in progress also because then I CAN digitally reverse it, and it also allows me kind of save a backup of the lineart and stuff. If I REALLY botch the coloring phase, then I can throw that away, then trace my finished lines by loading the scanned lineart, putting a clean piece of paper up to my computer screen and then tracing over them to get them all back. Sure, I have to do the inking again, but at least I don't have to start all over if I ruin the coloring.
To an extent, you can do an extra layer even with traditional drawing if you have a computer or something else to use as a light table.
Congratulations! You got a various tips and tricks from artists up here! Cool tips you guys! 👌👌
Me: Laughs in MS Paint.
15:44 simultaneously the best joke this channel has ever made, and the worst, since I was planning to show this video to my art teacher. Not anymore, lol.
You poor soul. You probably could have stopped at around the 14 minute mark since the point was already sold
OoPs
Our animation teacher showed us this video when we started learning about Character creation, we all laughed when that appeared
@Diego Haro your animation teacher must be really cool then xd
One of the two animation teachers we have looks like he is in his 20's when actually he's almost 40 xD
Fak i was gonna send this to My freakin family
"Go Outside"
Covid-19: No, No I don't think you will
@ISABELLA ABALOS I d o n t h a v e a b a c k y a r d. What shall I resort to
@@FinnValentineB ....a.....a balcony....?
@@FinnValentineB your roof
@@pokaay3163 well I think the people who live above me would be mad. But hey, I guess it'd be payback for how loud they always are
@@FinnValentineB WINDOW :D
The dog princess redesign was a little bit TOO exaggerated, they changed totally the concept of what it was, changing completely the colours and remove the cape it had. Yes the colors were kind of exaggerated but they were completely changed instead of keeping the palette as similar as possible
exactly and the colours were meant to be like that on the original one and the colours don't look bad either
i love how you worry about the dog princess when this monstrosity of the fish lady redesign exists
I agree. The red cape and less round design gave the princess the vibes of a kind girl who was born into a monarchy but has medieval/Victorian gender standards forced on her. The redesign was almost too friendly and feminine with her round shapes and lack of cape.
My guess on her personality eas confirmed when they showed the art of her gardening. She was wearing her nice dress while kneeling in the dirt and shoveling. That told an entire story from that one picture alone. In the new design, the shovel implied a similar story, but her actions spoke louder than her design and i couldn't tell if she was kneeling in dirt because she is so round.
The color values on the redesign were indeed better though imo
You guys need to read the pinned comment
@@NovaTheScreechingDragon lol fr
" Professional character designers change their art style constantly "
Me: Maybe I am a professional character designer
Me who can't keep my characters on model: proofeshonal
My art style went from stick figures to stick figures with eyes then to slightly more detailed stick figures and then lastly to anime.
That is a mood right there
I used to draw like these very bad characters that had to much geometry and no shoulders and no eyes. To the same thing with the eyes. To the same with with now shoulders. Then a series of anime styles. Then a series of cartoony styles. Then combined the cartoony style with the anime style and oh wow we made it somewhere.
@@raidstrt_8766 what I am trying to do is combine an anime style with somewhat of a realistic style. This style though I only really applied to the eyes of my characters. And also same here with the no eyes part. Most of my characters didn't have eyes because I didn't know how to draw eyes so since my characters used to be made out elements like water, fire, ice, land, etc. I just decided that they didn't need eyes but once I finally gave my main character eyes which were these circles with lines around, like how a kid would draw the sun, I liked the design so much that I kept lines around one of the character's eyes ever since, although now instead of it just being a part of his eye it is more like an injury or result of something instead. My character's designs also used to be very bad. The characters' designs were to simple, but now ever since I changed the characters into humans and completely changed their stories they now look alot better, though I am still improving so they are still bound to change again.
@@solarelements23 That is so interesting, With my style, I am focusing on a anime style then coloring it as it were a simplistic cartoon. So usually I focus most of my time on the lineart, adding the detail so then I can color it in. Also, your story on how your eyes improved throughout time, my story is pretty similar! As a kid, I refused criticism and would always make excuses to not make a change to my art. You could say I was ignorant to change. This ignorance would continue til I made it to 5th grade, where I would finally notice what everyone was talking about and would actually try improving my art. That would only last for awhile as I would be stressing myself on so many flaws til I decided to take a break from art. A year to be exact. I lost my whole ability to do art. So coming back to it was a hard task because it felt like starting from stage one. So long story short, ( Because this is a long message lol ) I drew furries for 2 years because I forgot how to draw people, later would look at reference and draw humans again, change to digital art which I've been doing for almost 3 years now and try many styles til I find the right one.
While this is good, I feel as if some of the redesigns missed the points of the intent of the original designs and cared more about making it marketable and not making it have actual fleshed out meaning
Well that's kinda what they're going for. They aren't really giving tips on how to make good original characters, they're giving tips on how to make characters that stand out, characters that are easily identifiable from the silhouette, characters that use specific shape language. But not of those are really all that important if you aren't intending for your character to be an icon, if your character looks good, like the first OC pirate chick, it doesn't need to follow any of the rules as strictly as they act as that just completely changes or removes the personality of the character.
Dude that's literally the point of the channel.
Ladies and gents, the point
@@SugarHue "not making it have actual fleshed out meaning
" is the point? Then why would i watch this channel
@@Xecution099 they're not here to tell you how to make your characters, they're here to tell you the rules of icon. They're solid rules to make iconic characters, but if you don't want to market characters then you can break these rules.
The redrawings in this video were kinda aiming for generic.
11:02 "lazy" I think this was a fantastic video on character design, but it should be noted that ideas, poses and color are different for different cultures! That image of the buddha is not meant to convey the state of someone whose lazy, but rather the buddha during his final days of life, before he entered paranirvana.
and turning back to those buddhist ideas, it affects color, too! Red in our culture can signify danger or strong emotion, but in tibetan buddhism, red is a color of protection and compassion. We view blue as something meaning sadness, while for them blue is a color of wisdom. white = mourning, etc.
Hey lila thanks for clarifying that! We were not thinking of any religious meaning; mainly just the pose of the statue! But thank you for pointing that out we love to learn :)
@@BaMAnimation it's no problem! I know not a lot of people know that, nor did I until I started looking into buddhism.
In general, pure red is a very intense (and sometimes harsh) color, Which would only make sense for it to be used to convey danger or compassion, because both are very strong feelings! It’s used for stop signs or alarms because it’s eye catching, and why hearts are mainly colored red in advertisement. Other examples that red may signify to others are: anger, passion, blood, love, fire. Talking about colors and what they can represent or convey is such an interesting topic of mine!
@@Zhxta that's very true. I was speaking more in terms of color meaning than color function, but you're right, red is a very intense color!
15:44 I AM SCARED
Me too buddy me too😞
Red: Dangerous and sexy
Kool-Aid Man: Ohh yeaah!
.......... WHAT
@Alejandro GAMEZ SIERRA and to be fair, hes sexy as FUCK
Well, I just wanted to mention kool aid man, but ok😂
My friends have a story involving him that makes him dangerous...
Yes, I found this comment! 😄👍🏽
Aah, THAT’S why anime characters always have weird hair! It’s to compensate for the bland body shapes!
And why superheros have colourful and over the top outfits.
Rhaynebow Not just hair, but other design elements (facial, costume, and props most notably) are ways you can plus up a ‘meh’ human-proportioned design into a stellar one. One Piece’s Luffy & Hunter X Hunter’s Gon are good examples of that philosophy. (Luffy has a lean muscular build with messy short black hair & wears a long sleeved red cardigan, yellow sash, oversized blue trousers with cuffs & a round brim straw hat. Gon has long, spiky black green tipped hair and his usual outfit is composed of a oversized green jacket with red trim, white tank top, oversized green short shorts, and green laced boots.) The point being is you can apply the principles of good, readable character design to whatever it is you’re cooking up, and the principles of caricature & shape value can still be applied to designs with “conventional” human proportions. Keep the basics to heart, you know?
#NotAllAnime
Also with some genres of anime they go into chibi form where they literally have the same body, or even just an oval of their face pops into the screen to scream at something that's just been said, so the hair needs to be iconic to serve that purpose so when its only their floaty head in a speech bubble you still know it's them
I also noticed that detail some time ago. Unfortunately, since then I can't look at anime/manga-styled artwork without feeling of same-face-syndrome shoving into my brain.
I heard that in the past it was done intentionally so studios could reuse same shots, frames and designs for different animes (because of low budget) and over time it just became heavily fused with the genre itself. Not sure, if that true, it's just a random story.
Them: "Like how red might mean dangerous and sexy,"
Me: Clifford no!
I mean clifford is huge right? He could just squish anything thats smaller than him, including humans
Aries Clarisse I thought you were gonna go into a totally different direction with “he’s huge”
Red is also a warm color, which fits Clifford’s personality (a big friendly dog)
Clifford yes
@@isabeanie81 You've seen the dark side of the internet lol
Coming back to this video a few years after first watching it and wow, I regularly use more of the design advice from this 20 minute video than from an entire semester of animation class. *I'm not joking.*
them: go outside to gather reference!
People in quarantine: hm.
*_hm._*
I’d like, but you have 69 likes.
*I hadn't considered that*
TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWOOOOOOO
that line aged *horridly*
"Simple designs encourage the animators to have fun"
Hazbin Hotel animators: ._.
Hazbin Hotel's characters have so much potential! I think the just need to change up the silhouettes to fit the characters a bit better.
Not gonna lie, I can't stand looking at that animated pilot. Just something about Vivzie's animation style really gets under my skin, but I'm honestly not sure why. ._.
See gamers, this is why you shouldn’t over-detail your characters.
the style was always more for an illustration purpose rather than animation; Vivzie has always had experience animating detailed characters, sure, but she never learned how to effectively translate picture style into animation style. In the long run, adding a few pink spots and some stripes on a spider isn't very practical for the long run.
Lol I love that XD I don't think it takes anything away from the characters, I just think it doesn't add anything except the amount of time it'll take for the next episode to come out
I think its important to realize that this is a very HEAVILY STYILIZED art style. The points are good but you can bend them and take in the ones that will/can help you with YOUR own style. You don't have to change your style to fit this video or take every point extremely seriously. Also, some tips and tricks may not apply to you and your style. Thats okay. Remember! These are tips, not "you must do these things or else your art is terrible and your characters are terrible...etc etc"
thank you 🤦 too many butthurt ppl missing the point of the vid
@@NoName-ug3yw fr, coming back here and seeing more negative comments is eh, valid but i still enjoy the tips
True. There's was alot of valuable points in the video like their advice in making the character sheet like a roller coaster is great.
I'm having such a hard time designing bc my art style isn't so stylized but more semirealistic 😭
@cloudyangeltv SAME the character i'm drawing is supposed to look like he would blend in irl which means no crazy hair or shapes so this video isn't helping much. .
Designing a character doesn't mean morphing and changing the art style of the original character completely, the squid girl actually looked normal before being turned into a person who looked like they just got their 4th round of plastic surgery for the day.
“It’s just my style!” Says every 12 year old amateur artist
Fr they made her look like levi jed murphy
Yeah like I thought the drawing was really good but then they turned her into a bunch of triangles
@@MM-pv5tpwhen did they say that?
@@MM-pv5tp Yeah but that doesnt mean you have to turn every character into a cubist nightmare. It's fine to mix shapes when creating characters.
10:57
Here we have Jesus t-posing to show his dominance over a bronze child
Shut up Mista
44 likes *Mista*
Yes
Teus
This is cursed
"Animation can be more powerful than Live Action"
Oh yeahh Disney Must Learn from this guy, so they can stop doing that damned Reboot.
Too bad the rat's brain is rotten and only serves to be the slave of China
"Yellow is joy and happiness."
Some wasps and hornets: Excuse me what-
@hell ño bees aren't wasps/hornets though-
I like bees, too, but if I see a wasp or a hornet I'm running to Mars
*hmm yes i always whip out a smile on my face when i see a yellowjacket zooming towards me with murderous intentions*
They just want you to bee happy
Charlie Brown: Good grief.
I associate yellow with A N N O Y I N G
The problem is, you use an extremely cartoony, almost non-humanoid artstyle. These principles almost only work with very cartoony drawings, and taking most of the details doesn't make it more recognizable and it makes its palette smaller.
"Animation can be more powerful than live action."
Disney: *I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that.*
EDIT: y'all need to calm down in the replies, this was literally just a joke about how Disney's recent movies have all been live action
@Max the point is that the live Disney movies today still suck even with the animations. It's not an animation movie if the movie isn't fully animated.
Yeah but its not supposed to be good, its supposed to make money
@@owlismyfavouritecolorflame2325 I agree. A movie must be good enough to attain successful revenue. If the movie sucked, it will have terrible revenue.
@@tvoovm7254 maybe its sarcasm but its not what i said, what i said is the aladdin remake made 500 million dollars, basically disney has a stupid amount of cashcows and as long as pretentious critics and stupid children who may or may hot be pretentious buy tiquests, we will get more
Also avatar
1k likes but only 5 replies
He just turned the dog lady into princess peach
Lmao, ikr. She was literally in the mushroom kingdom
Bahahahaha
I liked the first design better
@@finnygnat respect the opinion but no
@@pussylover3000 ok
"Is your character feminine, or masculine?"
Araki: *y e s*
Stolen
Who?
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
@@hixy1794 who actually cares
Non binary ppl: confused screaming
I feel like every damn art shouldn’t look like Cartoon Network
Listen, this is so valuable, like disgustingly valuable. In 100 years these principles will still be essential, like they were 100 years ago too.
P.S. thanks for the shout out my boys
So... Any thoughts you have in mind?
'like *disgustingly valuable* ' I felt that😂😂😂
I should have been taking notes but I was too eager to know what the whole video was about😂😂 I'll need to watch it again properly now
v a l u e
no incorrect.
This video is a very puddle deep approach to semiotics and the video makers own art is complete shite.
Hmmm... I wouldn't bet my last cent on it. The cultral meaning about shapes are subject to change over time. Those tips might be valuable *TODAY*, but in 100 years? People might see in round shapes the impersonation of death and epidemics and a pointy triangle as nothing else than nachos by then...
15:43 I looked away for a second and actually got startled when this popped up. I think you triggered my "fight or flight" response...
It triggered my flametrower instinct....
Flight
h
y
@@Kalorag Neo Nazi filth.
@@brainsteroids8043 wooow watch the N words there Aaron, not just that I am not, but my nation saved 50k of you during WW2. Its a joke, know yore memes dude.
7:44
Mario, Luigi, Toad
and GIORNO GIOVANNA
Bum bum, badada da da da da da daa, daa, dadada da da da, da da bum bum, badada da da da da daa, daa, dada da da da da da da bum.
@Patata Chif BADA DA DA DA DA DA DA A
@@thegnarledpirate9198 GIO GIO da da da da da da da da GOLDEN WIND, da da da da daa daa daaa daaa da
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought it was Giorno. it didn't even register that it could be Peach at all.
WRRRRRYYYYYYYY
This is one of my favorites methods
1. Try to think of an object or thing
2. Make it to a humanoid with some of the "thing" features
3. Add backstory and personality to them
4. Done and done
HEY, THATS WHAT I DO TOO!
4:17 I actually like the original art better. It's gorgeous!! These principles are fantastic, but just because you don't follow them exactly doesn't mean your art won't be iconic/recognizable. You do you!
Samme
I agree
Remember that these examples are each literally just ONE WAY to follow these principles. Before getting too confident in your own way of doing things- especially if that way isn't getting you the results you want- remember there are literally countless ways to apply art principles that still count as following them exactly, so rather than give up on a teacher's method because you don't like the first result you see it getting (not saying you, the reader are doing that NOW, but still) ask yourself how you could do it better in applying it to your own design and see what results you get.
Remember, if you have a goal you want to accomplish, and everyone you look up to for accomplishing that goal does certain things, if you want to succeed like them, (while it's not guaranteed to be true or guaranteed to work for you) odds are you'll have to do those things too, whether you like them at first or not. It's very satisfying to be told that you don't need to change, but if you want to change the results you're getting, then you probably do need to change something you're doing.
Ikr they both look so differend. I don't care if the first one is "incorrect", I like it more.
I guess the problem is that we didn't get enough character traits to be able to design the character to fit their personality. If the intention of the original artist was to make the character evil, the redesign succeeded. f the intention of the original artist was to make the character mysterious and kind, then the design failed. It all really depends on your intentions.
I feel like this gave some very good advice, but nearly every design they had just didn't feel... right to me. Like, they just felt... really stereotypical to me. And every design I saw strayed far from what the original designs were going for. Other than that, they have some really good advice that works.
I feel the same way and I think that's why these tips don't stick with me as well
I agree! Their tips are really good, but I didn't like their versions of other's character designs, they just didn't appeal to me! I managed to find these tips relevant for me only when they used characters from Disney and other franchises as examples!
I think what’s important to remember is that they are not setting hard rules on art. Art does not really have solutions and so this is more of a suggestion or introduction to the tools that are used by pro-artists.
exactly the octo pirate felt the most off to me because it lost all subtlety
@@Lumberjack_king yeah for me the character lost depth, the original character seemed like a 3-D character who will have arcs and conflicts while the redesign felt like a stereotypical character with a story arc/plot you could guess easily
When you showed the characters in just cubes of colors I felt that
That’s my art style
Aishi Ayano lol
Then you probably haven't heard of...
*Just Shapes & Beats.*
This video has been so important to me, despite not wanting to be a professional in art and just treating it as a hobby, I always rewatch this whenever I make a design and it's been such a helpful guide to make my work look a lot better!
Um... I think generally it's okay to use multiple shapes in a design! Just of a pie, majority of the slices (like 60-50%, but can depend on style) should be dedicated to one shape. Like Sora (who was in the video!!!); His design mostly consists of round circular shapes due to his clothing and face, but his famous keyblade consists of squares and his hair!!!!! Is literally full of triangles!!!
If we dumbed it down to percentages instead of strict dedication to one shape, Sora would be around 60% circle, 25% square, and 15% triangle.
It's also worth noting if themes contradict each other. That's okay! Especially if you want to make, like, a traitor character? Have them be all round and friendly and bright colored, but BAM and they're evil
exactly ur the best comment yet
Yep, in Joopies' video (which they recommended) mentioned about using a big iconic shape instead of sticking to just one. The percentage you wrote is how I'd see it.
And for the last part, that contradiction is what makes it interesting yet effective. Their design *purposely* trick you to believe they're friendly and cute, making you automatically lump them into a design stereotype but turns out: They're not what they look like.
Then again, design is subjective and it depends on the story or how you view it.
Double in Megaman X is a good example of that; though his second form is a lot more pointy and wiry.
They totally fucking destroyed that first character god their version was terrifying
They somehow exaggerated the idea of shape language to the point of butchering a character, I don’t know how they thought it looked good ngl
@@tomemeornottomeme1864 well the point wasn't about it being good looking or not. Whether or not it's appealing is for another video, this was just showing how to make a character more recognizable, not making it look good. Though I agree they could've made it look better.
@@kaneda7368 no it was good and bad character design they were given the character to try making the character better and they ruined her
@@kaneda7368 The SINGLE MAIN goal of character design is to make it look good.
@@tomemeornottomeme1864 and the single main goal of that specific part in the video was to show how to make a character's silhouette stand out more.
man... i loved everything they said but when they were recreating their fan s work, yeaah.... i connected more to the fan drawings than the reworks
"I fixed your art work!11!"
-Them, probably
@@doopyman the redesign was literally just a princess peach copy. you can even see them "referencing" her in the new design. aside from the color scheme, which i agree should be a bit tweaked, the original design is far better imho
"art is subjective" and them contrasting it on the context of "it's my style -san"
@@lamptabled they just put her in a a cute Mario artsyle, by your logic daisy and Luna aren’t seperate characters compared to peach
@@pearlchinasa1770 daisy's orign is literally just a recoloured peach lmao
this video started my journey of character design, i may not do everything like this video tells me but it made me look closer on the world around me
You know, something about this video always bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what. Now I know: you’ve left out the most important part of character design: the purpose. This video really only focuses on the appearance or style of a character design without considering who the character is or what their purpose is. At the beginning you list important things for a character design: silhouette, palette, and exaggeration. And yet you don’t even talk about intention or personality or character. In the redesigns, it seems your only concern is on the technical and the theory, and you just throw out the character, purpose, and soul. For god’s sake, a femme fatale is meant to be dangerously sexy, not just dangerous! It’s like no consideration was put into the actual communication of concepts and ideas and everything was just theory. You took the character out of the character designs!
Well said
Yes! Thank you!
thank you! this is true!
I completely agree with you, but I don’t think the video is bad by any means. Any person who learns from this video and ends up being a good artist because of it will also know about what your comment pointed out. Art is a skill that in part develops with the person that makes it. To oversimplify things, imagine it like a video game where you can level a character’s stats. In order to learn how to use a knife in the kitchen to properly cut ingredients, you need to level up things like hand-eye coordination, patience, observation. Obviously this sort of thing isn’t something you can numerically measure I’m just giving a crude example because it’s the same for art. And art is unique because there isn’t a specific stat level up requirement, multiple different kinds of combinations of stats will help you make art, the difference being is that the kind of art you make will be different. That’s how styles are born, and they even touch on this in the video itself. Grave of the Fireflies’s story would be a horrible fit in South Park’s art style if your goal is to deeply emotionally resonate with the audience, because otherwise you just insulted the tragic history of another nation which, to be fair, South Park is notorious for being very crude and offensive so no new lines have been broken here haha. They definitely could have presented the re-designs in a different light though, since the title and wording within the video passively implies that the re-designs are objectively better based on a guideline forged from observations of other good character designs. Your takeaway from the video shouldn’t be the improved designs, it should be “there isn’t a rule for what makes a design good or bad, it depends on the story you want to tell and the style you want to tell it in, here are some common similarities between good character designs, make of it what you will”.
This. Absolutely this.
This video bugged me a lot when i first saw it, and this comment made me realize why. The designs seem to loose all personality/change it completely.
For example in the dog princess one, the character went from being a seemingly impressionable and positive princess, to being another generic cheery princess.
"Make Friends"
Ouch... I don't think I can do that...
yes
you
can
@@MoffinMouse Well thank you
Keep at it man
4:17 hmmm I personally like the original more.
Yeah It doesn't click at all, I feel circles would have been better
I think they were just trying to make a point but didnt come out to great
it's the hair and face, I think. the remake loses the sort of young, stubbornly headstrong yet kind at heart vibe I'm getting. definitely because of the lack of circles, a blend of triangles and circles would have been much better imo. it's a good design and a good demonstration, but it's not the same character as the original.
It maybe style of art too, look at Avatar: The Last Airbender
I Burst out laughing every time I see the new design, it's just so different from the org it caught me off guard.
I remember I designed a character for my DnD campaign and I showed the character to all my friends and all of them loved the design and character itself. it was my first attempt at designing a character in a long time so it was a very nice feeling!
so, a couple things
to start off, yes, i am aware that this video is over a year old now, and that this comment will likely just get lost in the sea of more liked comments. that's fine, it's not like i'm saying anything revolutionary in this comment, just speaking my mind
now. before i get into the brunt of it, i would say this video is a fairly good video if you're going for the style it proposes. it goes over good and basic theories that at least seem stable. it presents what feels like a good reason that mainstream media characters are so popular
at the beginning of the video it was stated that good and bad character design is subjective, dependent on context, viewer, etc. completely, 100% agree. in most cases, when a character is first made, it seems like good character design to its creator. the creator's view on the design on the character is entirely subject to change, but that's sorta off-topic for what i'm getting at here. my point is, first it was stated as subjective, then for the rest of the video it was treated as objective
"so marth, what's your main problem with the points the creators bring up?"
it's entirely focused on making a character a. basic and b. unique. while in some cases this works well, for example some of the media referred to in the video, in others it doesn't quite work as well. imagine a tv series whose setting is a dystopian future focused around uniformity. i would argue that to better illustrate this bleak timeline, the characters follow this uniformity with their basic design. however, once you get further than skin-deep, you start learning more about these characters and their widely different personalities despite their concretely uniform designs. an excellent example of media in which uniqueness would not work well
basicness is bland. yes, this is vastly more of an opinionated point than the last one, but i would argue that basicness is bland. it discourages adding small details that give a glimpse into a character's head, their past, their personality. perhaps the original design for a character includes a watch given to them by their deceased grandfather or a necklace with an intricate pendant signifying their religion. from what this video says, it would seem like to make the character better, you would have to remove these keepsakes, essentially stripping away an important piece of a character's personality
some of the redesigns in the video seem fairly ignorant to the intended designs i felt from the originals. the fish pirate at the beginning originally gave me a tomboy antihero vibe while her redesign just felt like the antagonist's slut. the sparkledog princess seemingly lost all personality and became furry princess peach. the character that the video creators shat on at the beginning went from (inspect it yourself, you'll see what i mean) divine ruler of casinos to some basic cardfighting magician man
one last issue i had with the video (which, mind, is extremely nitpicky) is that with many of the redesigns, important aspects of the characters where mirrored. before i receive comments telling me that all of the mirroring is intentional and part of the redesigns, i point toward the sparkledog princess. the redesign and the finished piece are inconsistent
after i finished the video, i decided to scroll through the comments to see if people had caught the things i had caught, and a comment by Clean Water clenched my heart and nearly squeezed a tear from my eye:
"me who found a style and feeling confident in art, actually likes a lot of the drawings now I make
after video: oh.."
this video, i fear, will tell passionate artists that their work is shit, and to make it good they need to stick with what's mainstream.
tl;dr, while this video can be useful, please don't let your passion die because you differ from the norm. keep making what makes you happy.
thank you for this comment! i really have just started drawing and i find it fun, and i tried to not watch tutorials online to avoid swaying my own experience and making it harder to enjoy. i understand this video was meant to be for ppl who want a career in this, but still they had so many points that really took all the fun out of the character designing i do.
🧀 here cheese because ur cool
🥖 have this bread with the cheese you got from tiger kat
hihi hello
🍅have some tomato for the bread and cheese so that you can make a sandwich
To people who prefer the original drawings: a lot of what these guys are saying comes from an animation point of view where the character needs to be redrawn and recognized in a variety of circumstances, rather than just a piece of art. Most of what they are saying stands true for both circumstances, but that might be why you don’t lie the redraw.
I completely rolled over the animation part of their intro and outro
I was wondering why everything was feeling kinda off! I was just about to comment that i don’t like the redesign but still consider their advice good, now i know why i was feeling like that, i don’t like their style because it’s made to be repeated and plain, i was wondering why it was getting a bit more boring in the redesign, they are professional animators, not particularly illustrators, so i really appreciate their Advice and examples as animation advice now, instead of plain drawing or pure design
I'd say this was true for me for only the first one. The redraw is great and gives off a much more recognizable vibe, but I also really like the original for it's complexity and keeping the round features. Imo, so long as you use no more than 2 different shapes in the design and balance them, the character design can still look good. Like how in the first one, the body had rounder features and the clothes were pointier. Even then, there were still some curves in the clothing and sharp edges in the body, making for a seamless combination of the shape language. If both shapes were in stark contrast, they'd clash and start to not make sense.
I mean I think the remade drawings improved some of the aspects but they were too different, so that they’re kinda missing the original vibes people were trying to give
Also important to mention that they aren't saying draw exactly like them but to take notes from aspects of their art and apply it to your style. Use consistent shapes, make sure your colours compliment one another instead of competing to be more dominant and exaggerated proportions and facial expressions can add to comedic effect.
Yeah they improve certain aspects of their design, but they also threw the characters into a completely different art style.
There were some really good tips in here, with a lot of good information, but I felt like many of the redesigns ended up with things lost in translation, or completely changed the intent of the original drawings.
I liked the original design better for the pirate, after they defined the silhouette more, but I think they lost a lot of the personality of the character when they completely redefined her. She went from looking like a fun, some what lovable villain who probably has a lot of flair and charismatic ego (sort of a Don Carnage ala Duck Tales remake) to a rather generic, sexy female pirate villain who probably only barks cold orders to her crew and leaves you wishing there was more to her character. They also got rid of a lot of the simple, yet interesting details that made her fun to look at. The new design has an interesting face, but the rest of her details leave it looking bland and forgettable.
The Dog design is adorable though. But I wouldn't have given her a crown and elements that look quite so much like Princess Peach. The shape is good, but she looks like she goes to the same dress maker. XD
The demon one is more striking in it's technical appearance, but I think the joke kind of got lost.... The big demon doesn't look stupid, he looks like a smart guy trapped in the body of a weight lifter. The expression of being perplexed is gone. The man also now no longer looks smug and like he's enjoying the demon's bafflement, but only looks like he's dictating from the book. Instead of a man stumping a demon, they are now a duo of a demon and human team pouring over demonic legislature. xp
I guess they did this as examples, like, when you want to make the character look like somehing an people thinks another thing from them. Also, in the draw of the devil and the guy you can see that at least it keeps some of the original one: the devil trying to understand what he's reading and the guy looking more smart than the devil
I don't think a lot of things in his video were very helpful like shape language should not be something that you have to use with every character maybe with some characters but not with all characters like what the pirate girl you're completely correct they basically took her design found it down the old it and then Stripped Away anything that made her unique it just made a carbon copy of pirate characters, idk i feel like they purposely did things just to match with their opinions of what we should be using in art are like with shapes triangles always being associated with evil villains and cuz they have sharp edges and squares always being associated with Bruce and dumb down buff characters and circles always being happy and go lucky well just take a look at Cartman from South Park Cartman is a bad character who's basically just a circle with legs and is a horrible person but yet he's a circle with legs and there might be characters out there that have more pointed edges and sharp edges like a triangle but could be very soft people and there could be characters out there that are modeled after squares that are actually very intelligent
I guess the purpose is to teach you some very useful visual design tools. Here, they only exagerrated more common features to illustrate common archetype-fitting, but you can play around with it by emphasizing any feature that is important for defining the character. There is more to it than just the tools they mentioned: for example, there is also an additional S "shape", sort of resembling a snake, that one of the character enhancements they had in the lineup used. Yet, the principles they convey in teaching you this give you more control to enhance your character and understanding the impact simplicity/complexity will have on your end viewer.
Essentially, exagerration/simplification is a good way to communicate one or two main idea about the character, then play around with it in the story by augmenting that characteristic (character shape matches function, for clear reading) or contradicting it (making a "book doesn't match it's cover" argument, sort of like with Hunback of Notre Dame). The second one is clearly riskier, because if you don't make it an essential element of your story, you risk bringing in too much detail and obfuscating the main points of your story. It should only be done for dynamic, complex, or thematic characters. Otherwise, simplicity reigns supreme.
On the other hand, if some feature is a key point to your story, then it can be a really fun thing to play around with or embed subtle messages inside. Like with the pirate: her triangles indicated her as a villain, but the circles/curves indicated that she also has a softer side too. Balancing the two gave a more nuanced impression, that could be tackled in whatever story she appeared in: maybe deadly or villaneous one moment, forgiving or merciful the next. Or maybe the message is reversed: she is often kind, but contains hidden edges inside, a quiet, sharp power, that reveals itself in serious moments.
I do, however, agree that a lot of their modifications changed the message or spirit of the characters, but they did that for a purpose: they were "simplifying" the shape/color principles they knew by only showing us a few simplified key elements, in order to make them more easily understandable to us.
And, funnily enough, this "simplicity" idea was exactly the message they were trying to pass down to us. It's cool when form matches function, and this is a concept that crops up in virtually any form of communication.
Though ofc, you can see the downsides here. There's a reduced ability to pass on complicated messages. And yet, the message is likely to be recieved and remembered better for its simplicity. It's all a tradeoff. A cartoon tends towards greater simplicity of characterization; large books like Robin Hobb's tend to express complexity focused around a few central ideas. Which one you prefer depends on your point, and your medium. Since visual design forms only one argument for your characterization, there are a lot of tricks you can pull in combo with your storyline/backstory in order to develop a good, solid character.
tldr: Simplicity has it's role, but has tradeoffs with portraying naunce. The video only shows basic principles in order to give you more tools in expressing your characters/story via visual design. Your actual story is what defines the actual purpose of that visual design.
Makes me think of that scene in Dead Poets Society where they rip out the first chapter of the textbook. Nothing wrong with following the strict rubric the author proposed to add style, but upholding it as the only valid option robs an artist of unique creative potential and individual expression.
I find the face in the octogal's redraw really creepy. Just. Giant puffy lips? yech.
Thanks for the whiplash at 15:44 LMAO helpful video!
15:41 if u tilt ur head closer to the left side of your screen, the shlong is visible....
*me who found a style and feeling confident in art, actually likes a lot of the drawings now I make*
after video: oh..
Just a heads up, this video is for animators (specifically, WESTERN animators). Drawings don’t need to follow any of these rules to be good :)
Lmao yea. What the other dude said. These people essentially attacked anyone who doesn’t draw like the animators of Mickey Mouse.
This video has some very good advice, but it also feels a bit restrictive. For example, shape theory is a good tool for character design, but it’s not the end all be all.
Just remember, good art is any art that works. As long as your art achieves the effect you’re aiming for to the best of its ability, then it doesn’t matter how many rules you break along the way.
Thank you all, keeping at it, still chugging along and hoping to continue growing, best wishes to you all as well!
@@cartoonishidealism582 Indeed. I was starting to feel the same way about their advice in this video.
I feel like they went too crazy with the whole shape thing. Sure, use shapes to portray your character a certain way, but you dont have to transform a humanoid into a geometric nightmare to portray personality-
Yeah, I feel like this video and it’s examples hindered me in my art development, because when I watched this, I was young, and trying to figure out how to make a good character design, since I was just getting started. But this made me think that to have shape language, I had to give my characters big obvious shapes like they did. I had no idea how to use shapes properly until I started watching Lavandertowne’s videos and seeing how she uses shapes in a more natural way
@@mangledfoxy2052 lavendertowne helped me learn some character making stuff as well :)
Exactly!
@@Dino-lw4mj She helped me to, I love lavendertowne's vids
@@mangledfoxy2052 you're not really supposed to look at this unless you want to make animation, or comics.
These designs don't flow very nicely into animation.
They did give quite a few good tips, just not everyone will go with an exaggerated, cartoony style. I prefer going with a more anatomically-fitting type of style.
same.
as the video says. you dont have to have a cartoony artstyle for it to be recognizable
I go with aaauh anime style c:
Same, I always want to make it more realistic
Though they did mention even if in those realistic style. They have those principles in mind.
Something i discovered is how the GTA games managed to make the main characters recognisable with only using clothing. Like you can recognize cj by his white tank top and blue jeans, tommy with his tropical jacket and jeans, claude with his black jacket and green pants, niko and his tracksuit, ect.
I feel like a lot of people forgot about the disclaimer: character design is subjective. If you don’t like their redesigns, that’s totally cool! These are, however the steps to creating a recognizable and iconic character, and if that’s not your goal, that’s all good. You don’t have to do any of this, but they are really helpful suggestions and offer some guidance.
Big pp
yeah i think some might have missed that. The author ( i guess) is talking about being iconic, not every character should be iconic. unless you wanna make the next mickey mouse or something.
@@AbdallahTeach absolutely. not everyone wants to create a kids cartoon character that will be recognizable for the next 50 years. subtlety and realism could work in a visual novel, for example, where you wouldn't think of proportional human bodies looking like monochromatic circles
Yeah ngl this video makes me feel like my characters need to be abstract in order for them to be good
Not really. The redesign at 4:14 doesn't even accomplish any of the things the narration claims it does, let alone make it look better. The silhouette isn't any more distinctive, and the triangle shape motif doesn't come through even if I know to look for it. If they hadn't told me she was supposed to "instantly read as a dangerous femme fatale" I would have no idea what they were going for at all.
You know what's terrifying, is when someone has an over-detailed character like the example for a bad character design, and they can animate it super well anyway-
Like bruh, who has the time foR THIS
Why did that just remind me of a lot of Vivsiepop's animations-
Clever Cat she has a team but it would probably still suck
SpookySpider what would suck? The animation?
@@hoolcheel2572 Not the animation. The animation process.
Sir Pentious actually looks painful to animate.
The redesign of the fish lady... egh. Did you guys just forget the human form is made up of multiple shapes, or...? Like what else are you supposed to do with a torso in that pose than two rectangles - not even that, rhombuses, basically the halfway between rectangles and triangles. Everything about the redesign's proportions look uncomfortable to exist in, and your read of the character was incredibly different than the shape language already being used. Perhaps the circles in the body represented a soft nature, and the triangles in the clothing represented a more bold attitude, eh?
Also silhouettes aren't quite as important as this makes them out to be. A good design should be readable in silhouette when they're posed for it, but not every pose has to look like your character is posing for a camera, arms outstretched to the sides. Especially in more realistic works you're gonna have to let them overlap to do basic things like hold a cup of coffee or sit cross-legged, and doing that doesn't negate the readability of the design whatsoever. We have lines and color for a reason, with good use of them you won't need to have an interesting silhouette 100% of the time.
They also oversell the importance of palettes by being dishonest in the presentation of them. They present the palettes of casts, not individual characters, arranged in the order they appear vertically, even repeating them sometimes like with Bert and Ernie. That's not a palette, you've basically just stretched the characters really wide and then cut out a slice of each. If you showed me the yellow and red of Winnie the Pooh without the extra yellow underneath to make the red look like a shirt, that would tell me nothing.
I sorta feel like they ruined the cartoony style of that drawing and made it worse in my opinion. The facial expression just doesn’t look right and pose is a tad off.
I think theyre trying to focus on a certain shape, and exaggerate it. But I do agree with your points too.
Well he comes out and says that despite all his experience and knowledge... he doesn't have a perfect magic recipe for success: only guidelines to help make things more likely to work out. Don't like the style? That's always gonna happen. The real point was to achieve certain goals with the character so that it could be animated. The previous character was, frankly, too complex. I think you ARE right though and that character wasn't done being worked on.
@@trustmeits610pm2 yea your right everyone has a different perception of art.
Bruh, thank you for calling that "redesign" out. The original one was pretty decent, but whatevah-the-fuck they made was... an abomination.
I genuinely love how well they snuck in that one drawing around 15 mins in, to the point literally no one so far in comments have even considered that being something to laugh about 😂, all seriousness, as a upcoming artist and animator, these are very helpful tips, I had a similar idea but this really helped me open my mind to variety of how to start off and points I never thought of, so awesome, to anyone also viewing this, goodluck, we both have alot of stress to go through ;---; thanks for helping, thanks for readIng 🤣
i was just about to talk bout that to lol
I was looking for a comment talking about that furry art
yeah, i was thinking AINT NO WAY THEY JUST DREW LION NSFW
Nah it’s the most replayed part lol. Ppl just have a lot of criticism about the points made in the video that they’d rather talk about that over whatever the hell my eyes bore witness to
4:15 Most of this video I agree on, it's really helpful. But for the "improved" drawing, it just kind of feels like they got rid of a lot of character in the original artwork. Sure, trying to stick to one shape to make it look better is fine, but they just.... took so much of the good stuff out.
Yessss
Nah the improved is way better
@@hollysoup445 to you, maybe it is
They didn't even leave the fuckin shading in.
Not only that, but look at how fucked the anatomy is on the rework, it goes from "yeah, this is a little weird but I've seen enough rule34 for it to make sense" to "Yeah, her leg is broken" and "You totally forgot about the bottom half and drew it later, didn't you?". That's not taking into account how they made a phantom of the opera mask into face paint and bracers into glvoes.
I've seen a lot of people saying in the comments "I didn't like this redesign" when actually the purpose of the video is not to make likeable characters or prettty ones, its purpose is to teach how to express a certain personality or feeling in a character so it's easy to understand at a first glance to the viewer, it's almost obvious you aren't going to like some of the designs, especially the "villain" ones
ANormalUser thank you for commenting this
Agree. The purpose of this channel is to learn and discuss together.
Thank god someone else gets it
okay but that's not why people are mad, they're mad that in the video they're saying this is a bad character design but instead of fixing the design (which btw is a different art style) they change the design of the character completely from what looks to be a mysterious heroine to a complete Cruella Deville type of villain.
Also that whole color theory nonsense and the fact that they basically say if it's not the way they like it or the art style they use it's "bad design" when art style is a huge factor and different designs resonate with different people,
for instance a lot of people in the comment section liked the pirate girls original design so saying it's bad when it's objectively not insults everyone who likes that design.
The fact that we have to have people actually say this is somewhat sad.
I want to point out that shape language doesn’t apply to just people. I mean, that’s evident in the clothing in the character design, but it can be used in A LOT of things. You could have a bouncy, round motorcycle, or a really square one that looks stable and safe, or a spiky triangular one that’s fast. If you want, the furniture in someone’s room could be full of shape language.
Even more so, you can find rich shape language in the onomatopoeia found in Japanese manga. Shape can be applied to words too!
Be creative and apply shape language to new things!
out of all the art tip character design videos, I learned the most from this one. thank you for sharing your skills and knowledge to us noobs
This is good advice but on the verge of single-mindedness. A good character design is one that succeeds at its purpose.
I’m so glad someone said it!
They literaly said that in the beggining of the video-- it varies from person to person
Totally agree as well. Art styles heavily veering on realism that also use lots of extra details as they’re going to be 3D animated wouldn’t benefit much from this advice. (Not my style but similar.)
Yeah
@@cherry6255 these tips can be translated to a realistic style;
facial structure, body type, hair, clothing, etc, can be influenced by shape language. The color pallet tips can be shown through clothing, skin color, eye color, and hair color. Etc etc etc, posture, body language, whatever you can think of.
They "improved" some chars straight into corporate art valley. Nice
I can see how the remake loses its original design/meaning, but how is it corporate?
Agree. I liked the original middle east one cause it was bouncy. Now it looks like generic nickelodeon lol. It's nice. But it just lost the artist style
@@ButWhyMe... generic
@@ButWhyMe... Basically...think about it like it technically is, they took surface level art tropes used on, mostly, simplistically designed characters, shoved them into more complex designs, and exaggerated them until it hardly resembled the original design
For instance, the first design became a geometric nightmare and what you'd probably think is a scrapped 90's Disney villain, when that wasn't the point
The second design literally used Princess Peach as a base, and it showed in the final design! He got rid of their cape, changed their art style, and made their dress comically poofy...when the point was supposed to be color separation, and then proceeded to essentially call the old ones "bad designs" (by the title) and their redesigns *better* (also by the title)
I mean, I feel like they put more effort in saying their designs are *objectively* better than the contrary, which feels very..."non-artsy" anyways, yea?
10:58 That Buddha statue's posing is depicting him dying lol
I live in buddhist contry and it's true
How lazy of him
damn very lazy lol
Lmao
The irony is that at the end they tell you to do research about stuff.
Clearly, they didn't do research on that statue. Jfc.