Designing Characters - Three Examples from the Pros

Written By Stephanie Broder

The concept art stage of any long-form story project (animation, graphic novel, Webtoon, etc) is especially important. This is the planning stage where you decide on the visual look of your work, the physical appearance of your vehicle through the story (characters) and the world they live in.

Concept art can include character design, world design, and even props, costumes, and stylistic flourishes. For this post, let’s start with my personal favourite: character design.

Here are three examples of great character concept art from the pros and what you can learn from them:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

These examples of concept art for Miles Morales come from the book Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Art of the Movie, published by Titan Books.

The painterly pieces are by artist Alberto Mielgo, while the pieces showing greyscale/suit action poses are by Jesus Alonso.

Notice how Mielgo's works are not just nailing down the appearance of the character but also some of the key visual traits of the animated film. Exaggerated textures, a mix of cel-shading and smooth-shading, and comic-like linework show up in all these pieces. Character concepts can also help you pin down a unique look for your story!

Meanwhile, Alonso emphasizes how non-verbal (or non-written) storytelling can happen through expression and gesture. Learning how your character moves and reacts will help you make your comic more dynamic and lively. This becomes especially important as you introduce multiple characters! Does each one have their own unique way of moving, expressing and even standing?

Sibylline Meynet’s Cherry Blossom Girl

This character, designed by Sibylline Meynet, is from the book Inspired by Nature: A Guide to Designing Botanical Characters, published by 3D Total Publishing.

Meynet walks us through her process of gleaning inspiration from cherry blossom plants. I love that they inspire not only the colour palette and vibe of the character but the overall shapes, too. You can see how Meynet referenced the flowers and stems for a variety of possible shapes for her character, from thin and lean to round and full.

To continue with the shape language throughout her design, Meynet also considered different hairstyles that could echo the shapes of the body. She designed three possible options that suited a round character and three very different options for the long character. Carrying shape language throughout your character design is a great idea! It helps the character’s design harmonize.

The Art of Cuphead

These examples from Studio MDHR’s video game Cuphead are from the book The Art of Cuphead, published by Dark Horse.

Style, personality, shape language, and dynamic movement were all key to the concept art behind this smash-hit run-and-gun game. The Moldenhauer brothers, who were the masterminds behind this game, wanted to imitate the style of rubber-hose animation (such as the work by Fleischer Studios) and the “stage-play” aesthetic that Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, favoured.

The action shots of Cuphead by Hanna Abi-Hanna show how exaggerated, cartoony movements and gestures are part of the foundational design of the protagonist, Cuphead. Meanwhile, his pal Mugman went through an intensive iterative process to arrive at the final design. This type of brainstorming is so powerful! You may think you have a flawless design on your first try, but you won’t really know until you try a few others.

The more design concepts you come up with, the more selection you’ll have to pick your absolute best final works. The work by Abi-Hanna of Beatrice Lutz, the beet, was not even used in the final game! And the level Treetop Troubles features an absolutely packed cast of dynamic characters, but the exploration done helped the creators solidify that they wanted to lean into bug-themed characters.

If there’s one thing we can learn from Cuphead (and there are probably many!) it’s iterate, iterate, and iterate some more!

Stephanie Broder
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Character Concepts - Brainstorming Activity
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