Character design critique

[TDK1987]

Hello,

I've been developing a character for a few years now. He's in his late teens, eccentric and a bit off centre.
Recently a review of an animation I made described the design as "Obnoxious" and criticised the large eyes.

When I first created the character a couple of years ago he started off looking a bit different to the current incarnation with a kind of Sonic the Hedgehog style one connected eye thing.
As time went on it slowly evolved to keeping the larger eyes but separating them.

After reading Tom Bancroft's "Creating characters with personality" and remembering something I heard mentioned in a Simpsons documentary. I started adding bits and pieces to help the character stick out in silhouette.

The reviewer even drew up what he thought the character should look like (Though it didn't match the characters personality... or age)

This is the first time I've put something up for critique before, so there's probably quite a few problems with the design.

Thanks

Tom =)

(Also here's a recent experiment I made with expressions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbBdrgbRY ok )

[Aigis]

He looks a little too much like a blonde Philip J Fry, perhaps.

And there really isn't enough contrast in the coloured version. I'd suggest you try to fix that.

[TDK1987]

Contrast?

[Daverom]

Not gonna lie Aigis, no idea what you mean by that either.
But something that really urks me is that the neck is pretty disjointed.

[Kuoke]

Pretty sure Aigis means that the lines are a colour so similar to the fills that if you were to take them away, it would not make any difference. The most noticeable (or least rather) is that the character has eyebrows. I honestly didn't notice them until I actually tried looking for them.

[jeeshwa123]

i think you need thicker lineart. If you're going to thin out the lineart, your character is going to need more shading or detail. He just looks really awkward to me. He has made a lot of progress over the years though, I can't lie. I just don't think you've refined him quite yet.

And like M-Vero said about the neck, his body is kinda jacked up. Proportionally I would fix him a bit :)

[NogginmenAnimations]

I think the pencil art is significantly better than the digital. Try to stick more to that original pencil design when 'digitalizing', perhaps.

[TDK1987]

Thanks for the feedback =D

I had a go at making his freakish anatomy less impossible and added thicker lines. I wasn't sure what to do with the eyes though.

[ThunderSpam]

I would try tooling around with proportions and shapes and whatever right now as well. The character design is nice and he is a fairly well rounded character. However currently he has a bit of a creepy vacant stare. I am bored so I doodled him.

It really is incredible how a little bit of outside style can really change a character.

[Luis]

i like the thinner neck. I think the neck on the colored one above feels too similar to the width of his body.

[TDK1987]

I can see what you mean about the neck, I've played around with it and made it a bit thinner.

The hair's been sharpened at the ends a little bit as well.

[TDK1987]

I had a play around with the colours on the other two main characters.

The chap on the left is the put upon straight guy and the girl to the right has a personality that falls in between the more eccentric character and the straight man.

[ThunderSpam]

Alright, I was just screwing around before. Let me legitimately critique your characters.

First off we have Phillip J. Fry. Okay, he isn't Fry, but he resembles him pretty darn well. Two hair spikes in the front (Even though Fry's point up), spikes in the back, similar hairline, colour, etc. While his head shape is also pretty different, certain features and design choices (sizable eyes, shirt colour) lead us to the concept. But let's ignore the fact that this is a Fry rip-off, and move to more technical issues.

As previously stated, pay attention to the neck. I also briefly mentioned it myself. His eyes look disturbing. His pupils are huge, and he is staring directly at you. You can have characters look at you, but his eyes are rather soul-less. His expression is also very generic and fairly boring. Practice your eyes. I also think that you should try making his far eye narrower. He is at 3/4, make his entire face look like it's at 3/4.

His hair is also lumpy and weird. Even though cartoons use a fairly solid shape for hair, it would still sit upon the head like hair. However, this hair sticks out far too much, and should be brought in at the back.

I'll leave Fry alone for the mean time and take a look at your other two peoples. Let's start with straight guy, and for the purposes of this, I shall name him Eric. Eric, unlike his friend Fry, seems to have developed eyebrows through his life. He also has had a large heavy object dropped on his head resulting in a flattened top of the cranium. This dude has no skull beyond his face. His neck also has an amazing power to absorb his collar which should be in front of his neck. He also always has fans surrounding his feet, causing his jacket to flare out rather than wrap around his body. His eyes are also perpetually 6's, and he is always bored. Eric is a cool guy.

Now let's move onto Diane. She looks like a Diane. Unlike her good buddy Eric, she actually does have a top to her head, which is a nice touch. Unlike Eric however, she does not have a defined neck, instead just having a thick fleshy mass that oozes into her chest. She is also an amazon warrior, as she has cut off one of her breasts, and whittled the other one to be spiky. Presumably so that she can poke out Fry's creepy vacant eyes with her chest. But then again, she suffers from the same stare. Her ear hangs off the side of her head and could be ripped off in moments, and her nose looks like it's upside down.

Listen, you are trying to do something that I think maybe you should rethink. You are making cartoons, but you are doing what other people want you to. You are trying to make them more life like. But cartoons are not life. In 2005, your characters were not pretty. But by 2007, you had something more stylized. But then as you move forward, you lose that stylization, and get a creepy representation of a human form. Honestly based on what I can see, I like 2007 the best.

When someone tells you to pay more attention to anatomy, they aren't wrong. But if you can roughly draw the anatomy of a regular human, you will start to be able to do it in your cartoons as well. I would take a few steps back, and look at how you are drawing things. Perhaps 2007 isn't the best style you can achieve, but it does have appeal to it, and more characterization. Work on it and improve it. Constantly improve it. Never stop trying to make it better.

Just my opinion anyways.

[TDK1987]

I keep seeing mentions of Fry in here, looking around it looks more like Gabe's hair from Penny Arcade; I can't remember ever looking to Futurama for design ideas. Actually come to think of it, I turned to webcomics quite a bit when I was developing the look in the early days. Other design choices were influenced mostly because they're slightly easier to draw/animate.

The earlier suggested thickening of the lines made things... "stick out" that weren't sticking out before, I've now modified Susan to make it a bit less creepy.

I really wish I decided to develop a series based on blob creatures or Cell membranes... that'd at least match my drawing skill level.