01. Decide who your character design is aimed at

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1 Character design can be a tricky illustration beast to tackle. You may know how to draw dynamic characters, but designing your own character from scratch involves a lot of creative thinking. Although many of the classic characters familiar to us all through cartoons, movies and advertising look simple, that simplicity usually belies the many hours of work that have gone into their development. From Mickey Mouse's famous three-fingered hands drawn to save production time when he was first developed for animations in the 1920s to the elegant simplicity of Homer Simpson, character design has always been about keeping it simple. 01. Decide who your character design is aimed at

2 02. Decide where your character will appear Where will the character design be seen and in what medium? This will have a direct bearing on how you go about your character design. For example, if it's for a mobilephone screen, there's no point designing it to have a lot of intricate details and features. Nathan Jurevicius says that regardless of the format: "The process of thinking up concepts always starts the same: paper, pencil, green tea... lots of thumbnails, written ideas, scratches and sketches over sketches." 03. Research other designs It can be helpful to try and deconstruct why certain character designs work and why some don't. There's no shortage of research material to be found, with illustrated characters appearing everywhere: on TV commercials, cereal boxes, shop signs, stickers on fruit, animations on mobile phones, and more. Study these character designs and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them. 04. Make your character distinctive

3 When devising The Simpsons, Matt Groening knew he had to offer the viewers something different. He reckoned that when viewers were flicking through TV channels and came across the show, the characters' unusually bright yellow skin colour would grab their attention. 05. Use line qualities and styles to describe your character The drawn lines of which your character design is composed can go some way to describing it. Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character. Sune Ehlers characters are bold and seem to dance on the page, which echoes his approach to drawing them. He explains: "Drawing a doodle is about decisive penmanoeuvring. A strong line for me comes from strength and rhythm." 06. Use exaggerated characteristics Exaggerating the defining features of your character design will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identify the character's key qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and helps emphasise certain personality traits. If your character is strong, don't just give it normal-sized bulging arms, soup them up so that they're five times as big as they should be. 07. Choose colours carefully Colours can help communicate a character's personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Comic-book reds, yellows and blues might go some way to giving hero qualities to a character design. 08. Add accessories Props and clothing can help to emphasise character traits and their background. For example, scruffy clothes can be used for poor characters, and lots of diamonds and bling for tasteless rich ones. Accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character's personality, such as a parrot on a pirate's shoulder or a maggot in a ghoul's skull.

4 09. 2D or 3D? Depending on what you have planned for your character design, you might need to work out what it will look like from all angles. A seemingly flat character can take on a whole new persona when seen from the side if, for example, it has a massive beer belly. If your character is going to exist within a 3D world, as an animation or even as a toy, working out its height, weight and physical shape is all important. 10. Give your character personality Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character design; its personality is key as well. A character's personality can be revealed through comic strips and animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn't have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Personality can also be expressed simply in how the character has been drawn. 11. Focus on facial expression Facial expression is key to a character's personality, as Tex Avery's Droopy demonstrates Expressions showing a character's range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character.

5 Depending on its personality, a figure's emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. 12. Give your character goals and dreams The driving force behind a character's personality is what it wants to achieve. This missing 'something' be it riches, a girlfriend or solving a mystery can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. Often the incompleteness or flaws in a character design are what make it interesting. 13. Build up a back story If you're planning for your character design to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character's back story can be more interesting than the character's present adventures (or not, in the case of the Star Wars prequels). 14. Experiment! Don't be afraid to experiment and ignore all the rules and tips about planning and crafting the look of your character design. Going against what is supposed to be the right way of doing something could create unexpected and exciting results.