User blog:TheBubbleFox/Bubble's Guide of Creating A Character

Greeting young jammer, and welcome to my quick tutorial of designing and planning a character. This is a remake of an old article called Bubble's Guide to making an Animal Jam FC, now that I have a more experience with this community and a little of character design as whole. Also note that this is inspired by Emerald Pup's Writer Tips and Lessons, so thanks for the idea.

Now with all of that out of the way, grab your pens and papers for I will teach you (almost) everything there is to character design!

Step One: Design
First off, we need to sketch the character's appearance. Mostly a sketch is just the rough draft of a character, and it will be changed overtime, so be aware of their development process. One method is using strong silhouettes that make the certain character diverse in shape from others. You can mess around with body shapes if you like, but same body shapes may result in similar silhouettes. Another method includes drawing lines or crosses to certain parts of the body. This could separate them to not let you confused, as well as lining up certain parts like arms being covered by sleeves.

Speaking of, next we got accessories and clothing. This would alter depending on the character's certain adjustments. These include personality, time, temperature, and location. For example, a character that lives in a cold biome would have thicker clothing than ones who are centered in a hotter area or another habitat.

And then we got expressions and poses. These also depend on the personality of a character and how they feel most of the time in normal situations. For instance, a character that is often gloomy or sad would most likely have a pale expression. After all, not all poses have somewhat to do with leaning back or forth.

Finally, there are colors. Now, one thing I suggest the most is using too many colors. Otherwise, the loads of details pasted on a character will distract the viewer on what to focus on. Rather, try selecting a palette by choosing up to 2 or 3 colors or from the net. In case you're having difficulty choosing colors, you can try using the color theory. I myself am pretty new to this method, so I'll try my best to explain.

There are three set of levels for colors: hue, saturation, and value. Hues are the color's theme in a rainbow. Black and white aren't included since they are shades according to the theory. Saturation is the strength of a color, whether its colorful or dull. Finally, values determine how bright or dark the color is. Each color has a meaning to it. I won't be going to explain each of them to save time, unfortunately :C

Step Two: Personality
So now that we got the character's design out of the way, we can now move on to writing the character's personality and trivia. A character's design heavily depends on the personality, and can even change over time through character arcs. However, even a few rules have to be set for the strengths and weaknesses of a character.

First, they must be balanced and match with each other. Having too many strengths may have the character overpowered and unfair, while too many weaknesses causes them to be extremely pointless with little to no use. Second, it's best to make their personality unique to keep them from getting bland.

Step Three: Backstory
This is the character's past and what they have experienced prior to the story. The character's appearance nor personality should fully reflect on their backstory, but a character not flinching even during a tragic event seems illogical. Backstories are also part of a character arc that is made up of the character's past, what happens to them throughout the story, and where they leave off after the story.

Second, it's best to keep asking questions from extra trivia that will lead to ideas for the backstory. However, some small events in their life are the least needed to be mentioned, so keep that in mind. Finally, their type of backstory should fairly shape their main trivia, which again, includes personality, interests, and even appearance. For example, a scar means a tragic wound in a certain event.

Step Four: Relationships
Unless the character is alone, they must communicate and interact with other characters. They can be enemies, friends, or just normal people to each other. Character relationships can also change during the events of a story. Two may be rivals at the first act, but could become friends overtime.

Conclusion
Honestly, the design of a character is probably the most of what I covered in this blog, but I can change it overtime if I could. I hope this has helped you create a character of your own and have a great day/night!