How do you bring out your characters?

Psiogen · Post by **Psiogen** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:39 pm

eps wrote:WHEN I FIRST BEGAN READING YOUR COMIC I NOTICED THAT IT'S ALL IN CAPS! Capital letters usally mean shouting on the internet.

Um...over 99% of all comics in history have been lettered in all caps. To make your characters shout, you just have them talk in GIGANTIC FUCKING ALL CAPS.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 6:19 pm

RPin wrote: I certainly wouldn't. But then, I think hair and clothing are THE most important parts about character design.

Hair, clothing and the shape of the face. (Like where Tommy has a more square face, withe Gordon has longer and eliptical, Jessie has softened angles while Rebeca was a very sharp cheekbone... of course slacker like me is bound not to respect it all the times)

...over 99% of all comics in history have been lettered in all caps.

Pretty much.
Frankly, sometimes I wonder how much comics that are not webcomics have you guys read? All caps is a standard in printed comics which, as we know, have around 100 years longer history than webcomics. This is because allcaps are by far most readable lettering type, and with all kinds of artist's handwritings, that was not unimportant. Frankly, first comic that I remember reading that was not allcaped, was CRFH, and I remember thinking how peculiar characteristic of style that was. I was sure she was using it because she found it interesting and exotic, not because she tought it should be a comic standard.

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 6:33 pm

mattgo210 wrote:One thing that the reviewer said was bad was that the characters were dull and boring.

I get that a lot, and it hasn't ever stopped me. It's impossible to please everyone, just do what you think is best.

Mr.Bob · Post by **Mr.Bob** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 7:02 pm

topic title wrote:How do you bring out your characters?

I plan to bring all my characters out of the closet through one giant sex scandal involving ewoks, tentacle monsters and dalecks.

Xmung · Post by **Xmung** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:19 pm

... and everyone thinks your only joking mr. bob...

Sippan · Post by **Sippan** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 3:11 am

Cool, now that I think about it, my characters are easily recognized both as silhouettes and as bald robe-wearers (unless the robes have really big hoods...and one of them has to be derived from some kind of "well, he's the only one I haven't figured out already" reasoning - Swedish has a word for it, but I can't recall the English equivalent at the moment) but take away their hats and glasses, and they're identical twins ^.^

RPin · Post by **RPin** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:32 am

mcDuffies wrote:
RPin wrote: I certainly wouldn't. But then, I think hair and clothing are THE most important parts about character design.
Hair, clothing and the shape of the face. (Like where Tommy has a more square face, withe Gordon has longer and eliptical, Jessie has softened angles while Rebeca was a very sharp cheekbone... of course slacker like me is bound not to respect it all the times)

I think shapes of face and body are still too dependant of the artist's style. There's a reason why I could never draw you decent fanart for McDuffies. They simply don't look like your characters if they weren't drawn by you. Let's see if things change with Little White Knight...

To me it all comes down to this: if people with different styles can draw your characters and you can still recognize them, then you do fine as a character designer.

Jim North · Post by **Jim North** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:15 am

mcDuffies wrote:
...over 99% of all comics in history have been lettered in all caps.
Pretty much.
Frankly, sometimes I wonder how much comics that are not webcomics have you guys read?

Quite a few, here . . . and I've noticed that there are a few comics out there that are starting to use standard English capitilization rules rather than ALL CAPS. Most notably, Spider-Man. I was kind of freaked out by it the first time I saw it, actually . . .

Sippan · Post by **Sippan** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:39 am

One of the first comics I read was Donald Duck, and that one is properly lettered...

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:54 am

RPin wrote:
mcDuffies wrote:
RPin wrote: I certainly wouldn't. But then, I think hair and clothing are THE most important parts about character design.
Hair, clothing and the shape of the face. (Like where Tommy has a more square face, withe Gordon has longer and eliptical, Jessie has softened angles while Rebeca was a very sharp cheekbone... of course slacker like me is bound not to respect it all the times)
I think shapes of face and body are still too dependant of the artist's style. There's a reason why I could never draw you decent fanart for McDuffies. They simply don't look like your characters if they weren't drawn by you. Let's see if things change with Little White Knight...

Yeah, probably. What I earlier mentioned about comics where all characters are designed the same and the others where they're designed differently, mcDuffies falls into the first group while LWK falls into the second one.

Andrew Hickey · Post by **Andrew Hickey** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 2:40 pm

I think the slow move to standard capitalisation in print comics is coming from the increased use of computers in lettering, rather than hand-lettering. All-caps is the only way to do it if you're hand-lettering, but on a computer, either can be readable.
I use all-caps myself, mostly because I've got far more attachment to print comics than to webcomics and so doing it any other way seems wrong. I do, however, use a very computery font rather than a more comic-esque one, as I simply don't have a better font and can't afford one (or indeed figure out how to add fonts to The GIMP).

Naohiro · Post by **Naohiro** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 2:52 pm

Well, the way I do it is that I try to give the characters a mysterious quality about them and make them very out going. I try to keep people guessing about my characters. Who are they? What is their history with the other characters? How does this character know all that information? But I don't like to spill everything about the character right then and there. Viewers will usually get bored once they find out everything there is to know about a character, so by giving the reader information on the character at a slow pace is usually best. Or at least I think so.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 3:56 pm

Hmm...just realised that my main character (let's call him that because he was the first one introduced) started at the new primary school at the very beginning (I know, this is apparently cliche, but I didn't read webcomics before this, so I didn't know). Does that mean he has a mysterious past?

How mysterious a past can you have when you're eleven?

Sippan · Post by **Sippan** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 5:09 pm

Dutch! wrote:Hmm...just realised that my main character (let's call him that because he was the first one introduced) started at the new primary school at the very beginning (I know, this is apparently cliche, but I didn't read webcomics before this, so I didn't know). Does that mean he has a mysterious past?

How mysterious a past can you have when you're eleven?

Dude, you obviously haven't seen that TV show I saw as a kid which I can't remember the name of no matter how much I try, but which may or may not have been "Sally's Secret", which was about a young girl who was sort of a genius and it turned out that she was an alien and that her granny neighbor was an alien commander in disguise whose microwave oven was some kinda alien laser device.

Man, I miss that show

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:05 pm

Can't say I have, no...

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:05 pm

Can't say I have, no...

Jim North · Post by **Jim North** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:34 pm

sippan wrote:Dude, you obviously haven't seen that TV show I saw as a kid which I can't remember the name of no matter how much I try, but which may or may not have been "Sally's Secret", which was about a young girl who was sort of a genius and it turned out that she was an alien and that her granny neighbor was an alien commander in disguise whose microwave oven was some kinda alien laser device.

So, uh . . . did you . . . y'know . . . share your drugs with the other neighborhood kids, or did you keep it all for yourself?

Xmung · Post by **Xmung** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:37 pm

judging by sipp's latest avatar, i'm guessing the latter....

Naohiro · Post by **Naohiro** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:15 pm

Dutch! wrote:Hmm...just realised that my main character (let's call him that because he was the first one introduced) started at the new primary school at the very beginning (I know, this is apparently cliche, but I didn't read webcomics before this, so I didn't know). Does that mean he has a mysterious past?

How mysterious a past can you have when you're eleven?

When you're 11? Simple. Who are the kid's parents and are they his real parents? Perhaps he has a disorder that no one really knows about. Perhaps he still wets the bed and is scared to let others know. There are a lot of things you can do to make your characters more interesting. The main key is that there has to be some kind of problem or conflict that is a MAJOR problem, other wise your characters (and storyline) will get boring and old fast.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:36 pm

I was being rhetorical...sorry if that came out otherwise...

Oh, he's got parents. So have all the kids. Thing is we're just not going to introduce them. They're not going to be a part of the story at this stage, even though we've shown a few scenes at their own homes.

He does have this unfortunate ability to be an invisible nobody who nobody at school really notices...but it does mean he can see the spirits next door in the cemetery...there's the current major theme...

And I think if anyone it'd end up being his friend who's a closet bed wetter...

Any other closet bed wetters out there?

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How do you bring out your characters?

Re: How do you bring out your characters?

bad characters.... hmmm...