Egglings on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/egglings/art/The-Tumblr-School-of-Character-Design-600871907Egglings

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The Tumblr School of Character Design

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it's been a while, i know.

a collection of observations i made about character design on tumblr.

i would like to clarify that i'm not knocking the individual traits. i just find it bizarre how common this exact combination of traits is in original characters on tumblr.

i also want to take a moment to point out that my drawing here is a great example of vitiligo drawn wrong. remember guys, vitiligo most often occurs to the small extremities like the nose, lips, ears, and fingers. random patches may occur, but seldom are the fingers and ears avoided entirely. Yes, there are some people who have an entirely random pattern, but it usually happens as i just described it.

also, there's nothing wrong with having a character with vitiligo, it's just gotten waaaay too common in the character design community to the point where it's unrealistic and almost... dare i say, sparkledog-y? i mean, there are other, more common-in-real-life ways of designing an unconventionally attractive nonwhite character. you need to keep in mind that only about 1% of the global population even has vitiligo.

and the pastel undercuts, while they're sometimes a good artistic choice, aren't often used well in my opinion. undercuts and partial-shaves are difficult to make aesthetically appealing in the first place without the bizarre colors. i understand that you want to inject your tumblr-pastel-grunge-gender-nonconforming sensibilities into your art... but there are less garish, tacky ways of doing that.

but any of the stuff i listed can be done well, given the right circumstances, with one exception:
the stupid sassy t-shirts need to be completely abandoned by anyone with even a passing interest in character design. for one thing, they're just a lazy way of communicating a characters personality. i should be able to tell what its personality is without some tacky neon bubble letters informing me.

above all else: more is always less with character designs, so try to keep things somewhat simplistic.
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© 2016 - 2024 Egglings
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creepyfoxlover261's avatar

I like novelty shirts with sassy sayings, but I don’t make my characters wear them all the time.