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Anyone can create their own original fictional character. However, for the industry standard, how can a successful character be made?

Do you remember your favorite cartoon as a kid? A lot of cartoon characters, like SpongeBob SquarePants and Mickey Mouse, are easily recognizable by kids and even adults, and stand as timeless pop culture characters. When it comes to character design, it doesn’t end with cartoons: there are characters for fast food chains, video games, and even products. Everyone knows about Ronald McDonald, Super Mario, and the Kool-Aid Man!

In today’s industry, business-wise, a good character has to stand out and become an icon to be truly beneficial. But how is it done? There has to be more than simply creating a character, right? Here’s a detailed process of how a memorable character is designed.

Purpose Before the Character Design

A big mistake beginners make is designing a character before knowing why the character exists. In a professional setting, characters are created to solve a business problem, all in order to make a company more memorable.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Who am I making this character for?
• What emotions would people feel?
• Where will this character appear?
• What makes this character different from competitors?

Shape a Solid Silhouette for Character Designs

Giving a character a strong silhouette is one of the most important principles to character designs. Many iconic characters have it: think about Mickey Mouse’s circular ears or SpongeBob’s square body. Even as fully black fills, they’re instantly recognizable.

To create a strong silhouette:

• Use simple and readable shapes.
• Avoid unnecessary complexity, keep things grounded.
• Make sure the character can be identified from a distance.

Also, keep this in mind when it comes to using shapes for your character outline:

• Circles feel friendly and approachable.
• Squares feel dependable, strong and stable.
• Triangles feel energetic, dangerous or mischievous.

This becomes especially important when characters appear as tiny app icons, game thumbnails, or product packaging, and it gives your character personality depending on the shape of their silhouette.

Personality and Recognizability to a Character Design

A successful commercial character isn’t overloaded with details, but instead focuses on a singular or multiple unique traits in its design. Such as a unique hairstyle, an oversized accessory, distinctive clothing, unusual proportions, or a signature color as examples. Too many competing details make characters harder to recognize and more expensive to animate, print, or manufacture.

Visual design grabs attention, but most importantly, personality creates emotional attachment. Think about how these characters behave:

• SpongeBob is optimistic.
• Mario is courageous.
• Pikachu is playful.
• The Kool-Aid Man is energetic.

Their personalities reinforce their visual design and make them easier to remember. Even a simple brand mascot benefits from having clear personality traits, because consistent behavior builds recognition across advertisements and social media.

A great character can be used as attractive artwork, but it holds more significance as a long-term brand asset, and every design decision should support both creativity and business goals. The characters people remember for years aren’t successful by accident, they’re carefully designed to be recognizable, versatile, and meaningful wherever they appear!

What kind of character do you have in mind?

Anyone can be hooked on illustrating, they just need the reassurance and the motivation to do it. You’ll learn to love the creation of illustrations!

A huge part of graphic designing is illustrating such as logos, posters, artworks, and more. It can lead to having a more recognizable art style and to better grow your identity. Personally, I think its one of the easiest ways to improve as a graphic designer.

However, a lot of people find it really unmotivating, since not everyone has the art skills or creativity to do something outstanding. Plus, those who already posses those skills might burn out and grow bored of illustrating. Many people, including I, have felt that way before, but we’ve found a way to overcome those issues, and I’m willing to share the secret.

Illustrating is not always about skill, it’s about dedication

Let’s get this out of the way: you don’t need to be a renaissance artist or have god-like drawing skills to be a successful illustrator. Many feel like they need to require the ability to draw good, but they don’t have to. Illustrations also have a greater reach for a more generalized audience. Many influential artists have a very simple arts style. Instead, try aiming for an art style you can easily stay consistent with!

Never get bored of illustrating

Another way to stay motivated is to find an interest and illustrate based on that. For example, if you like a certain TV show, like Star Wars for example, you could create fan illustrations for the show and post them online. More people would be interested in your work, since it’ll reach users from other communities to your account and potentially get more clients.

For me personally, I joined a semi-famous community of a ‘Survive the Killer’ game back when it was small, and since I was invested in making fan illustrations for it, I became a recognizable artist when it became popular. Now, I managed to get hired to work for that game and I built a decent following from my illustrations.